Between Silence and Sound
by Sasaria
Summary: Having escaped the strange building, Zack and Rachel steal a car and remain on the run for several months after. During their travels, they come to realize there are still so many things to be discovered about one another. — 「 Road trip · Nonlinear fic 」
1. distance gapes as wide as a wound

**between sound and silence.**

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 **.note —** I feel as if some context is necessary to understand how this story works (I say this as if I know what I'm doing, lol). It's meant to be a *very slight* AU in which everything from the canon story still happens, but with minor changes such as Zack being able to drive (sort of) and the amount of time Zack and Rachel were separated before Zack rescues her from the rehab facility is significantly shorter.

Also as an aside, this story is **nonlinear**.

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「 **distance gapes as wide as a wound.** 」

「— **_tuesday_** **:** **3** **a.m.** 」

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It isn't until the dark and delicate hour of 3 A.M. that Zack gets sick of the silence and flips the car radio on. He usually doesn't last this long —an hour and forty-seven minutes— in the absence of sound. He's a creature of agitated nerves, always in need of someone and something to remind him that he's alive and the godforsaken world is still spinning. But that world is unusual tonight. Typically there are lousy drivers for him to curse at and long-lingering red lights for him to complain about. He feels more tense than usual as he oozes the car into the fast lane, irritatedly tapping the wheel with his index finger.

Rachel, on the other hand, has her own duties to attend to. She rides in the passenger's seat wearing a slumberless expression and her favorite white sundress. A roadmap spills out in her lap, but she hasn't had to consult it ever since they reached the highway. Her role in all of this is, primarily, navigator, and secondarily, treasurer, and tertiarily, complaint-listener. The third usually equates to not much more than nodding softly when Zack points out what he calls a 'piss-shit driver'. About 20% of those 'piss-shit drivers' are those who hold up traffic with texting. Rachel herself doesn't particularly care for cellphones. She carries one in the black pouch nestled on the side of her seat, but never reaches for it unless absolutely necessary. On these long drives when the road speeds by like a heart beat and the city lights melt in technicolor, she relishes the natural, the quiet, and the beautiful. The harsh light of an artificial screen hurts her already-tired eyes.

She peers out of her window, taking note of the exits they're passing and the truck stop up ahead.

This is their fourth straight hour on the road. Their fourth out of a cumulative seven. How many total hours their trip will add up to, she hasn't a clue. Everything about their journey is slapdash, starting as little more than Zack barging over to her before noon, tossing her a stolen wallet and telling her to pack a bag. "We're going on a road trip."

She obeyed, simply because she had no reason to refuse.

There was no way to have predicted the change in weather they'd face as the distance between them and where they've come from gapes wider. Eighty-seven miles per hour brings out an uncharacteristic cold to the summer air, but Rachel keeps the window rolled down because she knows Zack can't handle the stuffiness.

The song on the radio is lawless— scruffy guitar riffs and a jumble of cymbals and drums. Not her kind of music, but certainly something that would keep her awake if she needed it. She wonders if Zack's tired, too. He doesn't seem the type who'd enjoy long drives and cookie-cutter stretches of scenery. Admittedly, she hadn't actually believed him when he said they were going on a road trip. But if there was anything she had discovered, it was that he was predictably unpredictable, and there were always going to be times when he overturned her expectations.

"Ray."

She glances over, but he's watching the road.

"Are you cold?"

"A little."

"Say something, then," he growls, jamming a few buttons and turning the dial under the radio. Something shifts and the vents in front of the passenger's seat slowly leak warmth. He glances across for a split second before rolling up the window on her side until it's only a crack. "Don't tell me you only packed that sundress."

"I have other clothes, too."

He clicks his tongue and turns away— gestures that suggest his restlessness. Her gaze dwindles to the hand gripping the steering wheel and the finger that continues tapping at the leather with increasing speed. His body is rigid like a bottle closed up tightly and his eyes fizzle coldly as he stares down enemies only he can see.

"Zack, are you hungry? There's a diner up ahead. Exit 240."

"You wanna go?"

"If you want to."

She doesn't expect him to swerve. To flick on his blinker for mere seconds before careening across two lanes with such reckless speed that her shoulder blade strikes the door with a em _thud_ /em. She glances over again, but Zack grits out nothing more than, "Exit 240, right? I need to get into that lane."

Rachel doesn't advise him on driving, mostly because she knows it nettles him. Besides, he isn't a lousy driver by any stretch. His awareness is meticulous and his agility is incomparable. He handles the car as deftly as he does a blade, maneuvering in and out of lanes whenever he identifies a faster course through traffic. Of course, all is not forgiven when it comes to his flippancy towards speed limits. Zack considers them gentle suggestions, optional and fully able to be ignored if he doesn't find them agreeable (he never does). He's received a few parking tickets (which have found new use as gum wrappers and paper airplanes) because of said levity. He's also prone to road rage and will actively roll down his window to shout profanities at whomever made the mistake of cutting him off or whipping out their cellphone in front of him. Rachel isn't sure how they haven't been pulled over and the fact that Zack doesn't actually have a license hasn't been discovered.

Within the next fifteen minutes they bumble into a parking lot dotted with rain puddles. Turquoise and hot pink neon lights from the establishment's obnoxious store front reflect in each little pool. The sign on the building that reads "open 24 hrs" flickers between life and death at uneven intervals. It's an odd building (gaudy decorations thrown over an ugly underbelly), and the cobwebbed light fixtures and fractured railings hint at the establishment's age and how much care it's been given in recent years.

Rachel slides out of her seat and follows behind Zack to the front entrance. They both duck inside to the smells of charbroiled meats and stale alcohol. A few stragglers hang around, the societal dregs of the night, attempting to finish off the last of their wine as they stumble blearily through the hours. There's light music and even lighter chatter, though no one offers so much as a greeting as the two find a booth in the back near the restrooms.

Aside from a gash in the gray wallpaper and a tiny flip-top trashcan that's been all but forgotten since the lunch crowd left, the restaurant seems mostly clean and kept.

Zack unceremoniously flops down on the cushiony red seating and leans his head back so it rests against the wall behind him. A heavy sigh escapes him, but no words follow.

With more grace than Zack could ever hope to show, Rachel slides into her side of the booth and takes up one of the menus that rests on the table. The laminated paper smells strongly of French fries and other generously greasy offerings, but because she isn't quite starving, she turns her attention to the menu's lighter fare.

She scans through the bubbly lettering for a moment before remembering something quite crucial. Her eyes flitter across the table as she reaches over for Zack's menu as well.

"Zack, are you deciding yet? I'll read it to you."

"Huh? Doesn't it have pictures?"

"Only for a few items."

Zack peels his body from the couch, almost reluctantly, and grasps the menu. He stares at it for several seconds, a blank expression crossing his face before he looks over at Rachel.

"Read it."

As she reads through each item, it occurs to her that she doesn't know even the fundamentals about her traveling companion. The little insignificant bits of data that make up Zack Foster are lost to her. Favorite color, favorite music, favorite food. The realization has nagged at her before, and at times, she's even told him, "I want to know more about you." Every time she asks, he regards her with pensive silence as if he's trying to discover what she's up to, as if he's surprised he could take up a corner of anyone's thoughts. Nevertheless, he's never denied her an answer, and for that she's both relieved and grateful.

"What would you like to eat?" As the words leave her, she pictures his old room. Snack foods and soda bottles scattered across the floor. He's survived for so long on a diet of excess salt and refined sugars, bereft of vital nutrients and vitamins. This is probably his first real meal in a long time.

"That last one you read sounds good."

She lifts her finger from the menu to see the item he's referring to is shepherd's pie. An odd offering for a diner, but it sounded appetizing if not a bit heavy.

"And you?" he asks, pinching at a straw wrapper.

"I want to try the broccoli cheese soup."

"You're just getting soup?" his expression flickers somewhere between annoyance and incredulity before turning disdainful. "You're already thin as a blade."

"It's okay, I'm not very hungry."

At that moment a waiter wanders over. He's a portly man whose dress shirt is having a hell of a time staying buttoned against his girth. His oily brown hair, the other notable feature about him, is clipped in a peculiar bowl cut that seems to have a life of its own, bobbing up in down with him as he strides to their table overenthusiastically.

He poises a tiny notepad in his hands and a megawatt smile on his face. "Hey there, folks. What'll it be?"

"I can em _hear_ /em his shitty haircut," Zack grumbles, only for Rachel to prod him ever-so-gently. She knows that the waiter's beaming face is agitating him, but killing him would be entirely unnecessary and probably impossible even with so few people around.

Rachel decides to order for the both of them, leaving Zack to prop his chin on his palm and turn towards the window in vexed silence. He doesn't speak up again until the waiter asks them about drinks, to which Zack immediately demands his third coke of the day. Rachel advises him to go for water instead, and although he tells her to shut up, he grumpily changes his order to water anyway.

The waiter chirps affirmatively before leaving with their scribbled orders clutched in his hand.

Silence pools between them, as it normally does. The diner's music has changed from something classical and rich with violins to velvety smooth jazz. In spite of the relaxing music, tension still grips the night. Zack remains rattled on his side of the booth: tapping his finger against the edge of an empty dish, fidgeting his leg underneath the table, and glancing about at their surroundings. He's always been hypersensitive, but even the smallest semblance of calm he normally exhibits seems to be fraying.

"Zack, are you okay?"

He offers a noncommittal "yeah."

She peers beneath the table where his other hand is and notices he's gripping the car keys tightly.

Ever since she had met him on B6, he's been brazen, inexhaustible, and always forward-moving. How many times had he told her, repeating it like a mantra, "let's go," whenever those golden elevators opened to reveal a new floor of risks and hazards. He didn't like being tethered to one place, lingering among the same scenery. Movement meant change.

She doesn't know how he got his hands on those keys, who he might've ambushed and stolen them from, but she can imagine that once the idea to do so entered his mind, he chased it down desperately. A car can travel so much faster and so much farther than his legs could ever carry him, so once the opportunity to leave the same scenery of desolate alleyways and broken streets appeared before him, he took it.

Ever since he got those car keys he's never let them go, gripping them as if they were an answered prayer.

As she watches him stare down at his hands across the booth, Rachel knows that their journey is without physical destination. He'll drive as many miles as it takes to get there. He'll make as many stops as he needs to until he finds it.

In the diner, at the dark and delicate hour of 3 A.M., it occurs to Rachel that Zack is searching for healing.


	2. as dark things are meant to be loved

**.note —** Slight ZackRay ahead for this chapter!

Quote by Pablo Neruda.

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「 **as dark things are meant to be loved.** 」

 _"_ _I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_

 _in secret, between the shadow and the soul."_

「— **_sunday_** **:** **12 a.m.** 」

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The roadside hotel is a few steps above seedy yet several steps below refined. It smells strongly of some kind of floral detergent and the walls capture and absorb the muggy summer heat, giving the building an atmosphere akin to being inside a large beast's mouth. The baseboards are laden with dents, the carpeting bears questionable green stains, and the light take a few tries before it turns on. When it _does_ switch on, it does so with a hiss of circuits, illuminating the room for about ten minutes before fizzling out again.

Neither of them took kindly to the idea of sleeping in the car for the third night in a row, so when Rachel pointed out the sputtering neon sign advertising comfy beds and hot showers, Zack didn't question it. He swerved into the parking lot and the two shambled their way into the establishment and up to the front desk.

It's only because this hotel room is just a place to sleep and not to sightsee that neither Zack nor Rachel care about its miserable state. At the very most, the wrinkle-laden bedsheets appear newly washed, the bathroom is fully stocked, and the room smells fresh, clean even. Rachel especially desires to make good on the promise of a hot shower.

Zack knows this, and upon dropping the car keys on top of the chestnut-colored dresser and giving the room a judgmental once-over, he turns to her and says, "You go first."

"Are you sure?"

"Don't take all night." He punctuates the statement by flopping down on the room's solitary bed to begin digging through the bag they've brought with them. It's filled with supplies, all of which is stolen: a wallet that contains cash and three credit cards, several rolls of bandages, a handful of snacks, an old cellphone, and a few other small trinkets picked up along the way.

Rachel lingers, processing everything slowly, before disappearing into the bathroom. The light there works miraculously better than the main room's fixture.

She finds a stack of towels folded in a compartment beneath the sink and turns on the shower's faucet. After a few moments she checks the temperature, ensuring that it isn't freezing nor scalding before stepping inside. She keeps her shower brief, not knowing if a slipshod hotel like this has a limit on their hot water. Once the grime of three days on the road is washed away, she steps out, dries off, and pulls on an oversized T-shirt and shorts— the only other articles of clothing she's brought aside from her floaty white sundress.

She dabs at her hair with a towel as she retreats from the bathroom.

"Zack, you can go ahead."

He slinks past her in wordless response, body slumped with fatigue and eyes as faded as the overhead lights. Rachel assumes he was searching the supplies bag for the roll of bandages he stuffs into his pocket upon passing her.

After folding the damp towel and setting it aside on a stiff-looking armchair, Rachel also sets her eyes on the bag. She's been meaning to work on the trip's budget.

She takes a seat on the bed, tucks her legs beneath her, and lays a notebook, calculator, and pen from within the bag before her. The credit cards within the wallet have been taken from three different people, all victims of Zack's new scythe. Even with the true owners dead and unable to put halts on the card's use, Rachel prefers to use them sparingly as not to draw too much attention to the card companies. She also knows that the cards will have to be disposed of and replaced when they begin traversing states.

She calculates the amount they've spent thus far on their trip, punching numbers in on the calculator and scribbling down values as they come to her. The hotel has been their largest expense with food being a close second, then gas. She remembers an incident only a few days ago when the car ground to a halt in the middle of a side street, the tank finally giving way to emptiness. Zack swore a lot that day— somehow more than usual. He knew neither how to pump gas nor where the nearest station was. After several minutes of trying to get a stable connection on the old stolen cellphone, Rachel determined a gas station forty-five minutes away. The walk took two hours, and by the time they reached the station, purchased four portable containers of gas (Zack wanted to make sure it never happened again), and made it back to the slumbering side street, it was an hour after midnight. He still didn't know how to pump gas, but Rachel figured that she could look up a video later if the old phone managed to stay alive. If all else failed, she was sure a stranger would be willing to help them, so long as _she_ was the one who asked.

That memory gives way to others, and Rachel soon finds herself lost in thought. For no particular reason (at least, none that she can pinpoint), those thoughts are all centered around Zack.

It isn't as if he had done anything differently today. He spent most of the day behind the steering wheel, either smiling like a demon as he sped through a light that was quickly fading to red or grinding his teeth in the face of a three-car pileup. Yes, most days on the road repeat themselves, but the nights are always different.

Nighttime means silence, and there are always unfinished stories sewn within the fabric of that silence.

The previous night, Zack eased the car into the parking lot of a liquor store, deciding that it would be the place they'd settle in for the night. Other nights, they were tucked into a shadowy corner of a truck stop or under the large tree of a grocery store parking lot. All were dark with some semblance of coziness, and since it was long past closing hours, the liquor store was no different.

Rachel curled up on the passenger's seat and waited for oblivion to find her, as was custom on nights where the car took the place of a comfortable bed and the stars selfishly offered no light. And, just as routine would have it, her sleep was choppy, dreamless, and full of holes. Only forty-five minutes passed before some phantom force roused her awake again.

Her eyes fluttered open to the same night-colored parking lot, the hum of some slumberless insect, and Zack watching the window with a faraway gaze. Perhaps it was the sharp edges of broken glass on the asphalt, the obscenities spray-painted onto the side of the liquor store, or the clashing of distant yet fiery voices that made Rachel start to question the location they chose to settle in.

As she quietly untangled her body from its cocoon of blond hair and warmth, she could feel Zack's eyes following her.

"Can't sleep?"

His tone wasn't one of concern nor comfort, but it danced along the serenity of the night as if it naturally belonged there. In fact, in that moment, Zack blended in perfectly with everything the darkness had to offer, and Rachel thought it might've been because he had learned to move with it. He'd spent so much time in environments like that that his limbs seemed to disappear and reappear when he wanted them to and his breathing vanished no matter how much Rachel stilled her own in an attempt to hear it.

If the moonlight was just a tad dimmer, she never would've known he was still in the car with her.

She lowered her gaze, noticing only then that he was holding one of the plastic water bottles from the supplies bag. He offered it to her, but she refused it with a small shake of her head.

"It's dangerous here," she said.

He scoffed and took a sip. "I'm more of a monster than anything you'll find out there." As he turned his face to the window again, the moonlight raced to emphasize the features that not even his bandages could cover up— the rigidity of his jawline, the sharp curve of his neck, the bulb of his Adam's apple, and, of course, that golden eye that glittered as something strange and bewitchingly colorful on a body of dark shades and drab hues.

"Go back to sleep. I'm keeping watch."

In the hotel room, as her memories poke and prod at her, it's then that Rachel realizes why Zack is on her mind. It's the monster in him that captures her interest.

 _Monster_.

Cathy had said it, Danny had said it, even Zack himself had said it. They've carved that word into him, stained his bones with it, made it an irrefutable part of him. The concept of it all touches only the edges of Rachel's understanding. At what threshold does a human disintegrate into less-than human? She's asked Zack to explain why he chooses to encapsulate himself behind such an ugly word like that, but his answer is vague and foggy, leaving her with questions rather than contentment.

Perhaps they use that word because of his strange appearance, because of the bandages and what hides beneath them. She hasn't known Zack for any extended period of time, but because everyone else who's come into her life seems to bear death's handprint, Zack is now the person she's known the longest. Even then, she's never seen underneath his bandages. At least, not the ones above his waist.

She can hypothesize what he looks like beneath them, but actually asking to see him, actually requesting that he let her in that far, to let her be so close that she can see and feel him as he is — without barriers and borders— seems as difficult as crossing a minefield.

The story behind them has piqued Rachel's interest in the past. Not long ago he told her that the burns he covers up no longer hurt. Regardless of how widespread and severe they had once been, time had healed them as much as they could possibly be healed. With that in mind, Rachel concluded that those bandages were nothing more than his security blanket, despairingly used to hide his most hated flaw.

When she thinks of Zack, she doesn't initially place him as insecure, but she notices how he dresses, covering every inch of his body behind baggy fabrics and zippers. She notices the way he disregards any concern she shows for him, the way he turns his nose up when she attempts to care for him, as if he's unable to accept the concept of meaning something to someone.

He's tightly rooted in the belief that hatred awaits him beneath every stranger's gaze, and because it's all an endless cycle, everyone is a stranger. He scoffs at laws and sneers at restraints, not allowing anything the world labels as 'important' or 'sensical' to sway the way he lives. But there's a small part of her that feels that some part of him may actually be soft. Something still breathes gently, still exists tenderly, beneath the calloused shell that's hardened over him. She's caught a glimpse of it in the way he smiles at her sometimes, the way the corners of his lips rise _effortlessly_ and his eyes twinkle with a light he hasn't had since he was much, much smaller— when the world handled him delicately.

She's so lost in these thoughts, so wrapped up in trying to understand what may never be understood that she doesn't notice when the shoddy overhead light fizzles out or when the shower shuts off. But all at once her body becomes like glass when she feels a small weight press down on her head. She immediately realizes it's a dish from the hotel's decor and that Zack is the one who's placed it there. Said dish —a stained-glass creation fixed out of blue and turquoise pieces— is a stark, colorful contrast to the beige carpet and dingy wallpaper that greeted them upon entrance.

She can feel his eyes on her, assessing her, waiting for a reaction. He's done this before, sometimes with cups, other times with soda cans. She's confused each time he does it, and the only reason her body freezes up during this particular instance is because if it falls, there isn't money in the trip budget to replace it. Or rather, no money she's willing to spend on replacing it.

Her outward appearance doesn't change, save for the second-long pause of her hand in the midst of writing a calculation. Her eyes flitter over to him; he appears amused.

"Zack, what are you doing?"

"Trying to get a reaction outta you."

Her eyebrows knit together. He said something similar the previous times, too. Typically he aims for irritation or anger, but Rachel's features only respond with confusion.

"I can't write like this." She reaches up, removes the dish from her head and puts it in its rightful place on the nightstand before turning back to the trip's budgeting notebook. Zack responds with a dissatisfied click of his tongue before collapsing onto the bed beside her, causing the springs to groan.

The flurry of his movements allows a curious scent to reach her nose. A kind of citrus? Lemon, maybe? No, it isn't that distinct or sharp. It's mellow, something simple and clean. Hotel soap, but not the one she had used. She looks over, observing him for the first time since he arrived beside her.

He's dressed in usual attire, though his head isn't nestled beneath his hoodie. His hair is fully exposed, revealing tiny beads of water from the shower he's just gotten out of. With his body mostly turned away, he's winding a roll of fresh bandages. She can see that he's pretty much finished the entire process of wrapping himself already.

Her black pen scratches out the new string of numbers displayed on the calculator. She doesn't plan to say anything about the bandages in spite of her curiosity, but the bed jolts and an odd noise between a wince and a gasp hits the air.

"Zack?"

He leans sideways, unintentionally allowing her to see him much clearer than before. Pinched between his fingers is something thin and scarlet that he inspects with an expression that can only be described as nonplussed.

Rachel blinks, a phantom look of surprise swims in her eyes. "One of your stitches… It came out."

"Looks like it."

The disbelief gradually leaves his face, smoothing over into that look of irritated curiosity he sometimes has. He's still seated in such a way that Rachel can see his fingers delicately pull back the stitched skin to inspect the affected area. Her stitching is, in no way, poor or inadequate. On the contrary, something has caused it to come undone. Something powerful that's led to the entire top stitch shearing and falling apart in small bits in Zack's hand.

With a curse Zack retracts his hand from his stomach which is now spotted with fresh blood.

Before he can say or do anything more, Rachel nudges the budgeting supplies aside, grasps her black pouch, and removes a needle and thread from her sewing kit. She doesn't feel complete without having one with her, so before they had traveled even ten miles, she requested to purchase a new one as well as a new black purse to hold it in.

"Zack," she murmurs, "I'll fix it."

"Huh? Now?"

She nods, and because he hasn't any good reason to say no, he turns around and lays down against the pile of pillows at the head of bed.

The bed is wide enough for her to crawl over and sit beside him, though his position forces him to look up at her rather than at eye-level. She can feel his gaze as she observes the only area he hadn't had a chance to bandage— the crimson-colored gash carved lopsidedly into his torso. The first stitch is completely torn with a thin remnant of loose thread sitting in a bead of blood. The second stitch is weak, threatening to detach and take the other two with it if enough force is applied or if Zack moves too fast or too hard and accidentally pulls it out himself.

Now that the wound is open again — even if that opening is a small one — she rinses her hands in the water from one of the spare water bottles from the supplies bag.

"What happened?"

"When I was breaking out of that shitty jail, some officer fought me head-on. I guess he pulled it loose and I didn't notice." There's a phantom smile on his face, indicating to Rachel that the officer came out the loser in their skirmish. A faint part of her wonders if that man is still alive, though she doubts it highly. Zack has never shown mercy before.

"I'm going to restitch all of them," she says. Zack responds with a dissenting grunt which Rachel chalks up to him remembering all the discomfort he felt when she initially closed the wound. She doesn't have cotton balls, so she uses squares of toilet paper to pat away the blood. The area surrounding the injury remains an irritated red.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not yet," he grumbles, eyeing her wearily.

"I'll be gentle."

He grunts again and turns his eyes away.

The first time she brought her needle to him, there was a tinge of urgency. A fire ignited inside her with the same persistence of a flower fighting its way through the dirt to bloom at the surface.

 _'_ _I can't let my god die.'_ Those words spilled over her, driving every movement of her small, steady hands.

Things are different now. Zack is no longer the stumbling mess of blood and chaos he had once been, so she allows her eyes to longer for as long as she wishes on what Zack always strives so earnestly to hide. Blotches of discolored skin and trembling red veins ripple out from the wound. She had sewed the injury shut in four stitches, all aligned in a weaving 'x' formation. She intends to replicate her work from back then, but she'll have to undo the sutures first.

"Don't move," she instructs him, knowing that the process takes a remarkably steady hand.

He retorts with a simple, "yeah, yeah."

She knows he uses flippancy to mask his apprehension. His insecurity spills out in the form of tense muscles and averted eyes. Once again, he's exposing his wounds to her, and once again he can't bring himself to look at her directly.

Because the hotel light no longer works, she's forced to lean in closely which probably unsettles him more. Regardless of his discomfort, she can't keep her eyes from roving and her mind from wandering. According to Zack himself, he doesn't remember much about the incident surrounding his burns. He's wiped most of it from his mind, but the evidence of that man's sin is Zack's personal souvenir. On his body lingers light and dark: healthy, pale skin juxtaposed against dark, charred shades. He's not completely ordinary, but not completely abnormal. An uncomfortable in-between.

It all causes a twinge to seize Rachel's chest, but she isn't sure if that feeling can be called sympathy. What she _does_ know is that his scars fascinate her. The blemishes he insists on covering up intrigue her. She assumes that he's been called a monster ever since childhood, but as he breathes fragilely against her touch, vulnerable and open for one of the few times in his life, Rachel is awestruck. He appears so beautiful to her now. There are no burns, only beauty. No scars, only strength.

So she presses her lips to the bottom stitch, intent on validating that beauty.

And he crumbles.

His breath catches in his throat; a shaking hand clenches the sheets. He becomes a whisper, precariously tottering between rejecting the emotion and allowing it to drown him. He stammers out a fragile protest, but Rachel allows it to evaporate into the air. She can't see his eyes —it's far too dark— but she knows he's completely turned his face away, concealing it in the edges of a pillow.

She kisses the next stitch, then the next, enveloping herself in the feeling she had the first time she sewed him back together. Whatever she brought her needle to became hers, perfect and complete. Her father, her puppy, her white bird. But there's something different about Zack. He appears to her as a fragmented wish. She sews broken things together due to her fascination with the concept of wholeness and purity. But Zack is neither of those things. He's the most broken thing she's ever come across and his shards are scattered so far that she isn't sure that he will ever be whole again. Not only his body, but everything about him is damaged, shattered, and some times fragile, but she's never seen him as anything less than strong.

He has an imperfect perfection that both confuses and captivates her. He doesn't see it. She wonders if he ever will.

Just as she arrives at the broken top stitch, a hand shoves her away. Zack props himself up, adjusting so they're now eye-level.

"What the hell are you doing?"

His voice is a touch breathless, but mostly riled. Seeing him so close now, she can't describe the expression he's giving her, but it makes her heart shiver. His shoulders, all the way down to his hands, are still trembling as if something inside has awoken and is trying to split him open to escape.

Her eyes are glassy as she asks, "Does it hurt?"

He hesitates, and for a split second Rachel can see all of the ghosts he's held deep inside almost spill out through his gaze.

"No."

There's a weak resolution, a dull fire, behind his murmur, and once again he can't meet her eyes. His fist clenches, his body tightens, but he says nothing more before lying down again. With an exhale he buries the side of his face into a pillow, just as it had been before.

"Just… hurry up and fix the stitch, damn it…"

Rachel nods. She grabs her needle and sets to work.


	3. i reach for you most mornings

**.notes** **—** Diverging from canon just a bit, Zack is still afraid of fire. And, although this story is meant to be **nonlinear** , this chapter takes place after the events of chapter two.

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「 **i reach for you most mornings.** 」

「 **— _sunday_ : 5 a.m.** 」

* * *

It occurs to Zack that Rachel doesn't have nightmares. At least, not in the same way he does. Rachel is a silent and solemn girl, and if she ever has nightmares, she never says anything about them. She conceals them as her own little secrets, allowing them to stain her mind but never to spill out of that hidden chamber. Unlike him, Rachel's learned to exist quietly. Or rather, it's more accurate to say that Zack no longer knows _how_ to exist quietly.

He used to be a lot like her when he was younger— when his body was pathetically scrawny and the only emotion his blood knew was hatred. Back then, his expressions were as soulless as hers, and he often felt like his actual soul would ebb away completely had it not been stubbornly tethered to a body that was no stranger to sorrow-colored bruises and an ugly, protruding ribcage.

Regardless of the shitty hand life has dealt him, he's never wanted to die. And that's exactly why these nightmares terrify him. Ever since he left the building where his bad memories were constantly dragged to the surface and thrown in his face, the dark dreams await him each night like some sort of twisted companion.

He was never really afraid of Cathy's poison room or Eddie's graveyard, but his mind magnifies these places and he relives them— this time, with no escape. When he closes his eyes, he can feel the poison choking him, easing into his lungs like he's being possessed. He can scratch and claw and curse all he likes, but still it claims him.

Other times he sees himself buried six feet under, nostrils clogged with dirt, eyes devoured by worms, wrapped in soil, forgotten, unheard, screaming for his life. Although he refuses to be buried alive by that stupid, little brat, in his dreams, he's as helpless as his mind chooses him to be.

Worst of all is the priest's floor. Or rather, the staircase tucked away on the priest's floor. Sometimes Zack's dreams unfold right in the middle of that staircase. His body is frozen, but in that strange, omnipotent way that seems to come naturally with dreams, he knows what's coming next. The roof shudders, the walls groan, black rubble falls, and as swift as it takes to extinguish a pulse, the flames spring up around him. He can feel the fire licking at his skin, eating him again. What he fears most is to be weak, helpless, vulnerable, and he's all of those things when it comes to being a slave to the fire.

He can't move— he won't. His mind won't let him. So he stands in the midst of it all, trembling and sweating and screaming as the fire seizes him.

Of all the pains he's experienced —the blistering currents of the electric chair, bullets shredding through fibers of his skin, his own scythe ripping him apart— the fire is the worst. It threatens to wipe him away, to leave nothing left. To mangle him, to melt him, to corrupt and claim every last thing until he isn't recognizable even as Isaac anymore.

Yes, many of his nightmares take place in the building, but not all of them.

Some of them are painted the colors of the orphanage. Initially, those dreams make him more infuriated than scared, but soon enough they also find a way to chill him to the core. In those dreams, he once again sits immobile, forced to hear the proprietors say, "Dig, you tool. That's all a monster like you is good for. Finish your job so we can throw you away."

And suddenly he's under a spell where his limbs move on their own. His arms grab a shovel provided by phantom hands and he thrusts it into the dirt, again and again, just like back then.

He digs and digs for an eternity of seconds while their voices paint his mind's walls with commands and insults.

"Dig, you tool."

"Hurry up."

"Finish your job so we can throw you away, just like your mother did."

At some point his shovel hits the graying bones of whomever he's burying, and the same phantom force lifts him into the air before suddenly letting go. It's then that he realizes he's falling. Falling into the grave he dug himself.

They throw him away without another word, into the dark, because his purpose is now fulfilled and it's too costly to keep him breathing. He reaches out a hand, but no one is there to grab it, no one _wants_ to grab it, but still he reaches out, gasping and grasping for anyone to _save him_ to _please, please, save him_ —

And his hand always finds Rachel's.

His eyes fly open as the nightmare finally relinquishes him. He jolts into a sitting position, struggling to take in as much air as his quivering lungs can handle. The nightmares come often, but there are few times when they are so potent that they leak out from his mind and affect his physical body. His hoodie gets stained with sweat, his chest gets clouded with shock, his throat burns as he forces himself to take _deep_ breaths in an attempt to cool it. On those nights, he throws out his hands and they always grab onto something. He shouts out a name and it's always the same one.

His soul always finds its way back to Rachel.

And he hates it.

Never in his life has he searched for comfort in someone else's warmth. So, why is it that Rachel is the only one who can soothe everything that screams within him? Why is it that the cold that follows him like some kind of demonic presence becomes nothing more than a dull whisper when his hand finds hers?

Rachel awakens mere seconds later, her face blurry with bewilderment, her eyes wandering towards the hand Zack holds. She always does the same thing, always asks the same thing in a voice that has innocence sewn into its corners.

"Zack, are you okay?"

And because she always asks the same question, he always gives her the same answer. Not a verbal one, but an answer in the form of yanking his hand away and rolling onto his side so he doesn't have to confront those eyes. Even in the dark, that weird look she's giving him sinks under his skin and swims in his veins.

No one's ever looked at him with a face like that— with eyelids so droopy and attention so concentrated that he doesn't know how to react. That look on her face… there's something else to it, something he can't place, and it makes him fidgety and agitated because he can't put a name to it. She looks like she wants to reach out to him, to caress what's broken, but it all makes him want to sneer at her, to knock her down a peg and say, "You can't fix me, Ray. No one can."

It's not that _he_ thinks he's broken, but her eyes are constantly whispering to him, _Let me fix you._ _Let me_ try _to fix you._

He's come to terms with being a monster on the outside, but his chaotic heart is his alone and he plans to keep it that way.

He lingers, unmoving, for several minutes until Rachel's breaths steady and her gaze on his back becomes nonexistent.

He wills himself to sleep after that, and the nightmares become no more.

—

When Zack wakes, the sun is pale and pure and new. It calms his nerves, causing everything from the night before to evaporate into a blur of painless warmth and distant birdsong. With a hint of grogginess, he makes sense of his surroundings: chestnut brown drawer, bluish-green dish, doughy, red armchair... He's just woken up in that cheap, dingy hotel room.

Droplets of sunlight trickle in through the flimsy silver curtains, warming him like some sort of lullaby. When he sits up, the first thing he notices is how displaced Rachel is. The last time he shut his eyes, they were sleeping back to back in the oversized hotel bed. Now, she's facing him, bundled in upon herself like a crescent moon, her head only inches away from his stomach.

The previous night begins to wash over him, causing him to remember what occurred _before_ he was plunged into the nightmare realm. Rachel had re-sewn the torn stitches.

He dips a hand up under his hoodie and ghosts his fingers over the red thread, a tad surprised by his own gentleness in handling himself. Once again, her work is impeccable. Well, it seems that way to him anyway, and as long as the stitches do their job at keeping him from coming undone, he considers it impeccable.

Rachel is fast asleep and has probably been that way all night except for when his panic woke her. He doesn't know why, but her sleeping form fascinates him. When he first met her, the _real_ her, her dishonest eyes were both radiant and bleak. But there's no bleakness to be found in her when she's asleep. In fact, she looks like just a normal girl.

As much as the cheap analogy makes him cringe, the sight of her is welcoming, just like the sun. It's all like medicine to assuage the pain.

The light washes over her just as much as it does him, highlighting her in mute shades of white and yellow. He watches her, studies her, before deciding to let her sleep. It isn't as if they have anywhere to go.

There's no clock around, so he has no idea how early it is, but the groan that his body gives as he rises from the bed tells him it's much earlier than when he usually wakes up. He rolls his shoulders in an attempt to unfurl any remaining tension his body has captured.

He wanders over to the drawer that sits on his side of the bed. There's a lamp, a blank notepad and pen, and a collection of glossy brochures advertising the hotel's amenities. Because they have pictures, he flips through them with mild interest. They actually make it look like a nice place, which means the shots must've been taken years before the place went to hell.

When he finishes with one brochure, he lifts up another. There's an empty glass and a plate pictured on the front, and as Zack skims through it, he figures it to be some sort of menu. Room service, as they call it.

He discards the second brochure with an exhale. Regardless of his intrigue, it's not like he can understand the instructions for how to call room service in the first place. He wouldn't even know what to order, either. With nothing more of interest in the shabby room, he dips into one of the stolen wallets and pockets a credit card before retreating out into the hallway.

The hallway is empty, and with the emptiness comes a deafeningly irritating quiet. He decides not to linger for long and shambles towards the elevator, hands in his pockets. It takes him a moment to remember that the lowest level is represented by a button with the word 'Lobby' ( _"however the hell you read that"_ ) on it. After a short descent, the doors reopen and he steps out into an area that looks remarkably unlike the trashy hotel rooms several floors up. This area is incredibly clean with polished marble floors, a stone fountain, and a faint, relaxing twirl of jazz music. Probably a trap to lure people into thinking it's actually a decent place to stay…

There are shops in the opposite direction of the receptionist desk, so Zack decides to go towards them. The first is a gift shop that he initially doesn't plan on visiting until he notices that they sell clothes. The only outfit he has is his hoodie and pants— complete with bullet holes and a bloodstain right in the middle. It was never any problem when he lived alone on B6. There was no one around to judge him— or rather, there was no one who lasted long enough to judge him. He didn't mind his outfit, he liked how comfortable and easy it was to move in, but bloodstains attract attention. Unwanted attention. And as much as he wants to stay out of sight, he knows there are going to be times (like now) where he has to be out in public, among people.

As accustomed as he's become to the grunginess of his outfit, he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to put it through the wash at least once. The smell of blood, gunpowder, and whatever weird antihemorrhagic solution Rachel used on him have seeped into the fabric.

He walks inside, relieved that it appears to be empty. There are spinning display stands for postcards, shelves of snow globes and baseball caps, and an arrangement of multicolored books and magazines. He pauses every-so-often to study something that catches his eye, sometimes turning it around in his hand or making a small hum of intrigue before moving on to the next thing.

At last he arrives at the rows of clothing. Oddly enough, even in the summer, there are hangers with hoodies right next to the ones with T-shirts. He shuffles through the hangers, bypassing any of the ones with wording on them before finding one that's dark blue and around his size. He rolls the cuff around in his hand, satisfied when he imagines how warm and sturdy the fabric will be. He decides to buy it.

Just as he's about to leave, the sight of a smaller, matching sweater catches his eye. He thinks of Ray, probably still upstairs in her cradle of dreams. All she has is that sundress they found in the backseat of the stolen car and the T-shirt and shorts she's using as pajamas. Has she ever gone to bed cold? He usually tries to keep the car warm during the night, but sometimes it takes up too much gas or the humming engine attracts too much attention.

He pulls the second hoodie from its hanger and eyeballs the size before trying again with a different one. After settling on one that he thinks will fit her, he decides he's tired of the gift shop and would rather be somewhere else. As he leaves the clothing section behind, it isn't without bitterness that he notices he's no longer alone. A woman with her brown hair tucked into a bun stands behind the register, flittering back and forth like a hummingbird.

Zack's never had any money, so he's used to stealing when he knows he can get away with it. However, the security cameras peeking out from numerous corners are enough of a deterrent. He can't risk being kicked out and Rachel being left alone upstairs.

He drops both articles of clothing at the register, shooting the woman a dirty look when he realizes she's gawking at his bandages. Their eyes meet for a split second and that seems to be enough to get the woman to scramble for her barcode reader.

When she squeaks out the price, he all but thrusts the credit card in her face. When she doesn't reach for it, he turns his glare on her again.

"The card reader, Sir," she peeps. "You have to chip it."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You have to insert the credit card's chip into the reader."

"And I'm _telling you_ that makes no sense."

With a shaking hand, the woman reaches over, rotates the card and imitates with her own hand what to do next. "You have to insert the card into that slot down there… please."

He does as he's told, jamming the card inside and waiting. When the card reader lets out a beep and black letters flood onto the screen, he once again looks to her for instruction.

"What's it say?"

"You can remove your card now. Do you want cash back?"

" _Huh?_ "

"N-Never mind. You can simply remove your card."

He does, and the woman bags up both sweaters, rips off the receipt, and all but thrusts the items at him. She spills out a hasty, "have a good day," before rushing to the safety of a backroom. Zack stares after her, mildly entertaining the thought of slicing her open. The thought causes a smile to peel across his lips, but once again, those security cameras make it impossible to get away with. He takes his purchases and exits the gift shop.

Once he takes his first step back into the lobby, a sugar-sweet scent finds him. It's a reminder that he hasn't had anything to eat since yesterday afternoon. He follows the scent to what appears to be a café that sits in the middle of the lobby. There's a sign hanging from the ceiling, but he can't read it, so he doesn't bother gazing at it for very long. He figures it's just the café's name.

Beyond several identical tables is the register and pastry display. Behind the register is what appears to be a menu written in flowery white lettering. There are doodles of coffee cups and pastries there, too. If only that much effort was put into the actual hotel rooms…

Zack considers what Rachel might want to eat. She usually isn't too picky. He knows that she likes cornflakes and he honestly doesn't mind cereal, either, but it doesn't look like they have any. He peers at the buttery croissants and powdered cakes glittering inside the glass display. Guess they'll just have to have dessert for breakfast, then.

"Do you need any help?"

The voice belongs to an elderly employee, and when Zack lifts his gaze, he's immediately reminded of the old man from his childhood. This man's eyes also have a smile hidden behind them. Oddly enough, Zack isn't bothered by it. It's kind of similar to the way that old priest from the building smiled at him, only this old man doesn't seem to have some kind of hidden agenda.

Zack decides that he doesn't dislike him.

He glances back at the pastries before pointing a finger at one that has some kind of glistening fruit peeking out of its crumbly folds.

"Hey, old man, what's that?"

"It's an apple dumpling."

"And that one?"

"Raspberry cheesecake."

Zack hums in thought, tapping his fist against his hip. The old man stands behind the display case, smiling in that dark green apron that looks more than a little unfitting on him. It would seem more natural for him to be fishing on the edge of a lake or playing chess in the park or doing something else old men do.

After a while he begins making suggestions, discussing the texture of certain desserts and how they're made before finally asking, "Do you like chocolate?"

"Yeah."

"Our muffins are baked with chocolate chips," he says, motioning towards them. "They're freshly baked, came out of the oven not even ten minutes ago. They're one of my favorites."

"Gimme two."

The man nods, but bags up three instead, saying, "And an extra one, for whenever you get back on the road." He bundles the muffins with two cartons of milk taken from an icebox in front of display case.

As Zack leaves the café behind, he catches the old man waving him goodbye, and he can't help but feel like he's seen the old man from his childhood smiling at him one last time.

—

Zack returns to the hotel room in silence. The bag of sweaters is dropped to the floor, the muffins are placed on the nightstand.

Just being in this room reminds him of his nightmares once again. The blanket is still tousled from where he kicked it off and the edges of his pillows are still bunched up from where he gripped them. His chest begins tightening until…

He finds Rachel still asleep in the exact position in which he left her. Nature has painted her in different colors than before; she's paler now, more ethereal as the sun cradles her. Her face is shining, lips blooming pink, messy hair somehow finding structure in jumbled, silken swirls.

She looks so much younger, so much more innocent than the girl who knew how to aim a pistol with manic eyes and steady fingers. She's almost like — and Zack laughs scornfully at this— an angel.

Something strange and foreign steams in the pit of his stomach when he gazes down at her. Just the sight of her extinguishes the darkness, chases it away and makes it no more. This girl, this angel, this question mark that takes up a prominent page on the story of his life, makes him feel something he isn't sure he's ever felt in his life.

And he doesn't quite hate that feeling… even if he doesn't have a name for it.

He glides his hand down her cheek with featherlike gentleness. The feeling in his stomach responds by flaring up and then icing over. Somehow the sensation feels like he's taking a nap in the sun.

 _Even when I'm wide awake, I'm still reaching for you._

His features soothe into a smile as he moves his hand to her shoulder and gives it a rough, little shake.

"Hey, Ray. Time to wake up."


	4. you make the stars shine blue

「 **you make the stars shine blue.** 」

「 **—** ** _wednesday_** **: 9 p.m.** 」

* * *

"Damn it, Ray, help me out here!"

The location: a gas station tucked into the sleepy folds of a respectable neighborhood. The time: half past nine, though the black sky makes it seem later. The problem: the tank is empty and Zack has no idea how to fill it.

To his credit, he approached the situation with the intention of giving it an honest try. He's seen glimpses of people pumping gas on TV, had even been in the backseat of his mother's car, absently watching her do it when he was maybe ten-years-old. But _absently_ was the keyword. He was too young to drive at the time, never really knew if he'd ever learn how to. Instead he spent his days nursing a heart that always hungered for more than it was given and trying to fill the silence when she was gone.

Now, because of the situation he's in, a small part of him wishes he had paid more attention back then.

He knows there's a hole in the side of the car to place the fuel nozzle, but this is where his knowledge stops. There are buttons and letters and light-up advertisements all vying for his attention and he isn't sure what to press. So he slams his fist into one of the buttons in the center, but nothing appears to happen. He presses a green button, because as far as he's been taught, green means productivity and progress, but still nothing happens. He clenches the fuel nozzle, wondering if there might be some switch that must be gripped or triggered for it all to work, but, once again, nothing.

His foot flies, slamming against the fuel pump with a feral grunt. The only response he gets is the _clang_ of the machine and the startled stare of a businessman at a pump not too far away. Zack snarls at him as he circles the car to the passenger's side and raps irritatedly on the window.

"Hey, Ray, you're just gonna leave me to do this all by myself?"

No response.

He leans in closer, peers inside, and though it's hard to see in the dark, he eventually makes out Rachel's form: blond head down, chin nestled into the folds of her shirt, silent.

He's surprised to see her sleeping. Since she's the navigator, she never goes to sleep without him; it's something of an unspoken agreement. No matter how much fatigue sinks into her, she always waits until he eases the car into some abandoned parking lot or silent rest stop and cuts the engine for the night.

She was very much awake only ten minutes ago as she told him where the closest gas station was.

He knocks on the window again and after a few seconds, the door slides open to reveal the young girl, her eyes murky with exhaustion.

Zack's silent perusal of her only lasts only a few seconds.

"What the hell, you said you were gonna help me with this."

"…We're here… already?"

"Obviously."

He takes a few steps to the side, allowing her a view of the other fuel pumps and the convenience store in the background as proof. She doesn't respond, simply lowers her head as if she's trying to orient herself and climbs down from the passenger's seat. Zack watches her, trying to piece her together as she ghosts past him to the fuel pump, before he follows behind.

"So, what do I do?"

"The credit card first. In there," she points as the slot and he plunges the card in.

She directs him through the rest of the steps in a voice that seems on the very edge of collapsing in upon itself. She's almost swaying, fighting to keep her knees straight and her eyes open through the process that she researched just for this moment. When it's all done, she staggers back to the car with a gait so weak it's as if an invisible hand is leading her along.

Zack climbs back into the driver's seat and cocks his brow at her. "What's wrong with you?"

"Just… a little tired."

"You look like a damn zombie."

She utters a noise that isn't either affirmation nor denial. Her eyes, more lifeless than usual, are fixed on… nothing. Usually as he drives, he's aware of her presence: her naturally steady breaths, the warmth of her existence. Even when she doesn't speak, he can always feel her near.

It's different this time.

Something in her is ebbing away, like the last flickering moments of a street lamp. She's sinking slowly with not so much of a sound to announce her disappearance.

It bothers him, so when he digs the key into the ignition, he's a bit rougher than usual. The car growls to life, headlights awakening as he turns his glance to the car's rear window to begin backing out.

"Anywhere you wanna stop for the night?" he asks because he needs to hear her voice. Even if he can see her right beside him, he can't feel her, so he needs to confirm. "Is there a grocery store nearby or something?"

"…"

He turns out of the gas station and onto the main road again, driving in the opposite direction of where they came. The area is a quiet one. The asphalt is pristinely paved and fenced farmland with its bluish-green grass unfurls on either side of them. A peaceful, quiet town that seems to exist on the very edge of the world. Isolated, but happy.

The silence touches Zack gently at first, but the longer it continues, the deeper it digs into him. There aren't many cars on the road even though the hour isn't very late. One, maybe two, soar by over the course of ten minutes, but they barely make a sound. A handful of people trek through the tall grass on a late-night stroll, but they don't even look up as he drives past. Even the hum of his own car's engine isn't enough to soothe him. None of it is enough.

And because this silence is starting to become painful, he tries again.

"Hey, Ray. I need you to guide me. We'll find somewhere close and then you can sleep."

No response.

"Ray?"

No response.

"Ray, wake up!"

He shakes her shoulder but stops immediately when he feels her warmth. She's already fallen asleep once again, but it isn't peaceful rest. Her skin burns beneath his fingertips, vacant blue eyes are screwed shut, chest rising and falling laboriously.

"Shit."

She has the map but he can't read it to find any other place to go, so he flicks on his blinker and reverses course, back to the gas station. The scenery blurs as he pushes sixty miles per hour, hoping, though not necessarily caring, if the walkers from before see the car whiz by. Upon returning to the white glare of a dozen overhead lights, he pulls into a parking space, far away from everything else, and cuts the engine.

"If you were sick you should've said something."

He knows fully well that she doesn't hear his murmured complaint, but he says it anyway. He also knows she doesn't hear him climb out of the car or pull open her door to un-click her seatbelt.

In the moment when he gathers her into his arms, she stops being Rachel and becomes more of a heated, foreign object that weighs into him. She doesn't look like herself, not under this light. With her head lulled to the side and her skin waxing pallid and feverish, he feels lost. He's never seen her like this, not even after she had been shot. Back then she only looked like she was sleeping— like she had sunken below the depths of consciousness to envelope herself in a quiet dream. But now, her eyebrows are furrowed, small chest grasping for heartbeats as she exists painfully in his arms.

He has to handle her like shattered glass as he draws her close. She doesn't stir, barely does much more than wheeze as he kicks her door shut with the heel of his shoe.

Zack moves her to the backseat where there's enough room to lay her down.

And now what?

As a child, thanks to his monster-like resilience, he didn't get sick very often. But when he did, he was on his own. He'd sit on his bed, huddled inside the womb of a blanket because there were no arms to hold him. He'd sit in the darkness, suckling hard candies because there were no cough drops to soothe him, and he'd fall asleep dreaming of sweetness. He'd dream of his mother finding him, brushing his bangs aside, calling him Isaac, and for once in his life, the way she said his name would be coated in sweetness too.

 _Isaac. Don't worry, I'm here. I'm here, Isaac._

Maybe, by the power of her voice, he'd be reborn. Reborn as the boy who lives up to his name and _laughs_. Who doesn't gaze at life with eyes like a dying fire. Whose scars aren't retribution for sins he's never committed. Who isn't a phantom kept alive by a bundle of half-breaths and secondhand pity. Who isn't second place to a man his mother barely knows but clings to like air.

He stopped dreaming those dreams after the incident. There was no room for sweetness when his flesh was so poisoned by flames that he was afraid of what stared back at him in the mirror. There was no room for sweetness when the pain kept him up, tossing and turning and whimpering for relief throughout the nights. And, above all, there was no room for sweetness in an orphanage, where the scent of hopelessness was so thick that his stomach couldn't handle it and would dispel the scraps of whatever he'd eaten only moments after he scarfed it down. Somewhere along the way, he stopped thinking about his mother altogether. After all, she only had enough love inside her for one person and it wasn't him. She became nothing more than a nameless blot in his memories.

But he's thinking about her now, and he wonders if she even remembers him. Perhaps, if her bastard of a boyfriend is still alive, she's living with him. Just the two of them in the same house that was always so big and so empty and so hard to exist in because the silence she left behind was always so painful.

He listens to the wheeze of Rachel's breathing and thinks of his younger self huddled beneath a blanket in the inky darkness, also struggling to breathe. She looks like she's in pain with her skin of milk white and her body trembling with fever. He wonders what color her dreams are, if she can at least find comfort in them, but her shivering is increasing steadily. More and more, her shoulders down to her small hands are quaking, and all Zack can think as he watches her is one, single thought:

He doesn't want to be like his mother.

So instead of watching her suffer, he reaches over to shake her awake— but everything stops. In a blink —her shaking, her whimpering, her breathing— it all becomes nonexistent. Her body tenses, then weakens, and she unravels like a ball of yarn. Her body becomes a casket and Zack feels panic chill his blood.

"Ray…? Ray? _Rachel_."

And just like that, her eyes snap open as if she's felt a jolt in her system. Her chest dips as she begins to breathe again. Blue eyes find him in the darkness, trying to piece together why he's looking at her with such alarm and why his hand has so roughly shaken her.

"Zack…"

"What do I do? What do you need?"

He sees confusion swimming in her eyes. It's all coming back to her slowly— the realization that she's sick and he's at a loss. She rises slowly, her body still quivering as she holds back a cough.

"I think it's pneumonia. I need… an antibiotic."

Zack reaches over into the passenger's seat, takes up the old phone they stole from the previous owner of the car and turns it on. There's a GPS app somewhere on it. While Rachel prefers to use the physical map and road signs, there were times she relied on the app to find out-of-the way locations like gas stations or restaurants. Zack searches through the phone, finally locating an icon that looks like a map before turning it over to Rachel.

"Find a pharmacy and we'll go."

An affirmative hum escapes her as she takes the phone into her shaking hands. It only takes her a few moments before she offers it back to him. "There's one seven minutes from here. I turned up the volume; it should lead you there."

"What do I get?"

"You should be able to buy an over-the-counter medicine. It comes in a pink and white box with letters that look like this." She takes up a scrap of paper (one of those parking tickets Zack's taken to ignoring) and writes the medicine's name on the back in small, clear lettering.

He takes the paper, looks it over with squinted eyes, but says nothing. The name looks complicated and he can only recognize a few letters that he's seen before on the plaque that went on Rachel's door on B1. How she even remembers such a long name is beyond him.

"If you need help, show an employee the paper and they should be able to locate it."

"I know that much," he grumbles, more at the thought of having to ask someone directions than anything else. He stuffs the paper into his pocket and steps out of the backseat.

"Get some sleep; I'll have it by the time you wake up." He closes the door behind him and finds his way to the front seat, phone in hand.

The car comes to life again, the roaring engine ripping through the cords of peaceful quiet. As the car blazes down the pristinely paved road, a quarter moon rises in the sky.

—

Rachel dreams of a time when her father's love was easy to come by.

She's about six, maybe seven, years old, her only worries in life being what color ribbons would look best on her stuffed toys.

One spring evening, when her mother is out shopping, she lays in bed with a fever and an upset stomach. She had wanted nothing more than to go outside and read under the trees beside her house, but her condition had been terrible all day.

She has the blankets drawn up to her chin, teddy bear clutched for comfort, her mind fading in and out. The vague creak of her door rouses her fully awake, and with her eyes filmy with fatigue and tears, she peers at the new figure that enters her room.

It's her father. He's already shed his starch-pressed uniform and changed into more casual attire. Upon seeing her face, he smiles— a smile that spoons life into his eyes. A smile that reminds her of velvet laughter and love-filled embraces. A smile that only her father knows how to make.

"Mommy told me you've been feeling sick today, Rachel," his voice a soft croon of syllables. "I have some soup heating up on the stove."

"I'm not hungry," she puffs.

"Not hungry?" he feigns disbelief. The sound of his footsteps are neither heavy nor light as he walks over, bends down beside her, and pushes past her bangs to assess her fever. "You're really warm. Let's try this."

He rises from the bed's edge, disappearing from her vision for only a moment as he unlatches the window and lifts it open. A ribbon of cool air slithers inside; a splash of moonlight follows. Rachel sits up in her bed, allowing the covers to fall only enough for the night air to reach her neck, cheeks, and forehead.

Her father seats himself beside her, but soon she's in his arms, in his lap, huddled into his chest.

"I'm here, Rachel. Don't worry, I'm right here with you."

There are stars pinned on either side of the moon, each one explosively bright and close and beautiful, but the most dazzling ones appear in her father's eyes when she peers up into them. His blue is the calmest color she's ever known.

He plants a kiss on her warm forehead and pats her blond hair with a gentle hand before bringing her head back down to his chest. "Good night, Rachel."

So she closes her eyes and tries that trick of counting sheep like her mother taught her to do when she's restless. She imagines them vividly— fluffy and white with wool like a cloud. The sweet and soft creatures after which the meaning of her name is derived. Tonight she does more than just count them. She imagines a little family of three sheep, poking around in flower beds, having so much fun being with each other.

The idea is so wonderful that a new kind of warmth spreads through her. Her tiny body nestles into her father's as she imagines his starry blue eyes and _smiles_.

—

A kiss of cool air coaxes Rachel's eyes to open, not to her bedroom but to the backseat of a stolen car parked outside of a 24-hour pharmacy. The door to her left is wide open and she can feel Zack's presence perched on the edge of the seat beside her, his back turned to her.

It isn't until she moves to sit up that she notices his hoodie's been draped over her as a blanket. Upon closer inspection, she realizes he's wearing the new one he'd purchased only a few days back from some nameless department store. Her shuffling rouses him to turn and glance at her.

As he moves, the view of the night sky fills her eyes. The moon is finally out, fractured in form but beautiful nonetheless. There are stars, too, unfurled at every corner of the galaxy, so close that she could reach out with cupped hands and catch them.

Her fingertips clutch the sleeve of the hoodie as she gazes down to it.

"Zack, you—"

"I brought the medicine."

He dips his hand into a plastic bag beside him and pulls out a pink and white box. He offers it to her and she takes it, reading the label for a brief moment.

"They're not pills…"

"Huh?"

"Liquid medicine… tastes awful."

"Stop whining; I brought it, didn't I?"

Despite her misgivings, it _is_ the correct medicine, and whether it comes in the more palatable pill-form or the horribly-sour liquid-form, she now has what she needs.

"Take it and go back to sleep."

She nods and breaks open the packaging. There's a tiny transparent cup with numbers inscribed in it, and after reading the dosage, she fills it with the red tar-like liquid and takes two gulps. Each one is hard to swallow and she can't help the way her eyebrows furrow at the taste.

"Is it really that bad?" Zack asks, leaning over to catch a whiff of the bottle. She nods, though not without adding a final jab of, "It's why I prefer the pills."

He offers her a water bottle from the supplies bag which she eagerly accepts. It takes several gulps before the acrid cherry aftertaste begins to fade. She screws the cap back on and Zack stuffs both the water and the medicine into the supplies bag before tossing it away carelessly.

He draws his legs into the car, having had them dangling above the asphalt as he watched the moon.

"I'll keep the car parked here for the night. Move over."

She does so, leaving enough room so he can sit comfortably. She pulls away the hoodie that blankets her shoulders and offers it back to him.

"Keep it. You were shaking like crazy earlier."

"Was I…?" Her soft tone makes it sound more like a realization than a question. She watches him lean back against the seat, stuff his hands into his hoodie pockets for warmth and close his eyes. Tonight's one of those nights when they can't leave the engine on. It would attract too much attention in this area, especially if they're right outside the pharmacy.

There are no trees for them to take cover under, so she assumes it's best they both stay in the backseat to avoid the immediate gaze of any passerby. She makes a move to lay down again, but quickly notices there isn't enough room anymore. With Zack no longer taking up only the edge of a seat, there's no place for her to put her head.

She decides against laying down and opts to resting her head back against the seat, mimicking him. Everything begins to throb and ache again, so she closes her eyes and hopes for sleep to find her quickly.

It does, but only for fifteen minutes before the feeling of her head sliding from its upright position and plummeting onto Zack's lap wakes her. Her eyes snap open, the realization of where she is now washing over her all at once.

"What the hell are you doing now?"

"I fell."

His voice doesn't sound irritated, not quite. Just airy and languid, as if he had just woken up and was trying to piece the world together again. She hears him move, probably to glance down at her, before he mumbles, "Stay there if you're more comfortable."

He's resting his cheek in the palm of his hand, elbow propped on the car's now-closed door. The window is still open, though, and thanks to the light, she can see that his eyes aren't even open. He seems relaxed enough.

"It's more comfortable to lay down, isn't it?" he says, though his voice is extinguishing fast, giving way to sleep again. "I'm too tired to move. Sleep there if you want."

And like that, the world goes quiet again.

The silence touches everything so deeply that Rachel almost believes she could hear her own blood rush through her if her ears were more acute. Instead, she can hear Zack's breathing. She's fascinated by how soft and steady it sounds when compared to her faltered wheezing.

Even from her resting position she can see the moon and a chorus of stars staring back at her. She wonders if she'll be able to sleep with them shining so brightly down on her.

"Maybe… I'll count sheep."

She starts off at one but only gets as far as thirty before her mind diverges and she's picturing a family of sheep again. Cute white creatures with wool like a cloud, poking around in flower beds. Her fingers grip the fabric around her shoulders and she decides that a family of two isn't bad, either. Her consciousness is finally beginning to dip, so she allows one more look at the sky.

The stars look blue tonight, just as she remembers them.


	5. when your eyes feel more like silk

Long time no see! For anyone still following this story, thank you for being patient with me! I just wanted to mention that I wrote chapter 6 back in December and it just requires some edits here and there, and should (hopefully) be uploaded not too long after this one.

Also, despite this fic being nonlinear, this chapter takes place after the events of **chapter 4**.

* * *

「 **when your eyes feel more like silk than sandpaper.** 」

「 **—** _ **friday**_ **: 1 p.m.** 」

* * *

Zack has never felt the full force of twenty-nine hours until today.

He's been awake for about that long, and with every mile traveled, his body makes sure he doesn't forget.

There's a strangeness in how his thoughts begin to break apart —fracturing like pottery, fading like sunlight— until his mind is filled with nonsensical things, like why stoplights linger for so long or why so many people are content with the daily chore of traveling back and forth on long lonely roads.

He starts to wonder, if things were different, if _he_ were different, would he be one of those people? Suit and tie, hair smoothed back, drunkenly mimicking the daily grind of everyone around him simply because it's _normal_?

What do normal twenty-something-year-olds do? Probably go to college, some of them. Keep their heads stuck in books during the day and their bodies swimming in alcohol during the night. An endless cycle of loose ends.

He and academia don't get along, so it's useless to think of things like that. Besides, he doesn't believe in reincarnation, so the Zack Foster that he is today is the only Zack Foster that has ever lived and ever _will_ live.

He stops at a red light, and the lack of movement invites weird sparklers to start exploding behind his eyelids. He sees streaks and sparks of pure white and then he feels his muscles tensing up like rope, though he isn't sure why. He rubs his eyes. With heavy fingers he rubs them twice. He stops, breathes, waits for his eyes to become new again. The sparklers don't go away, so he allows his eyelids to droop and—

"Zack."

It's Rachel's voice (of course it is), and while he usually appreciates the familiarity, he hates the sound of it now. Her voice is painted in soft colors, breathy, murmuring, like she's caressing the air. Makes him sleepier, tempts him to fade away.

She sounds extra gentle thanks to her declining fever.

After spending the night in the pharmacy's parking lot, Zack had awoken to the blinding summer sunlight and the intrusive eyes of an elderly woman gazing at him through the backseat. It wasn't an appalled stare, like she recognized him as the criminal from the nightly news; she simply seemed too nosy for her own good. Probably thought she was seeing a homeless man and his daughter taking refuge in their clunker of a car for the night.

Either way, Zack decided not to stick around.

Perhaps he's being overly cautious (which even he considers to be uncharacteristic of himself), but he's determined to put at least three states of distance between them to avoid police. According to the phone's GPS, they'll be arriving at their destination around five o'clock.

"Hey, Zack."

Rachel says it again, making him realize that he hadn't answered her the first time.

He responds with a heavy grunt to balance out her gentleness. "What?"

"The light's green."

He glances up at it, watches as it breaks apart and double-visions into two stoplights. He rubs his eyes again to make it condense back into one.

The motorcycle behind them honks and its rider lifts the shield of his helmet to yell something angry but incomprehensible. Zack's limbs feel as heavy as sandbags, so he doesn't flip him off. Instead he revs the engine and blows exhaust into the rider's face before speeding through the light.

Rachel cranes her head to see if the cycler is following them, but Zack knows he isn't. He can still see the rider coughing in the rearview mirror. Rachel turns back around, shifts in her seat.

"You look sleepy," she says, and her voice is like shadow glass, all clear yet silhouetted by illness. "We should pull over so you can rest."

"We're almost there. I'm fine."

He's not fine. There are weird shadows bending like dancers in his peripheral vision; the sky doesn't look blue anymore, and he swears he can hear a dog barking somewhere nearby, even though he doesn't see one. By anyone else's standards, he's not fine, but he's far too stubborn to let himself be done in by hallucinations. If he tells himself he's fine, then that's what he'll be.

He leans over to toggle the air conditioning —a sudden idea that maybe cold air will keep him awake— but seeing Rachel out of the corner of his eye stops him. Although she's wrapped in his old hoodie and a blanket he stole from a laundromat, her shoulders still tremble softly from time to time.

For the past twenty-nine hours, she's been huddled in the passenger's seat, knees drawn to her chest, head pressed against the glass. Out of those twenty-nine hours, she's only been awake for nine of them. Her active hours usually consist of programming the GPS and reading street signs, but even then, she doesn't talk much.

He glances over once more, and his faulty vision blurs her face into a watercolor splotch of blue and yellow. His thoughts begin drifting again until they center upon a strange event that occurred the previous night, when her fever was at its worst.

It had all happened when he pulled into a gas station to buy a ginger ale to soothe her stomach. She had been asleep for almost the whole day, only awakening once to use the bathroom at a rest stop and again when Zack shook her shoulder, offered over her medicine, and commanded, "Hey, you need to take this."

She hadn't actually complained about any stomach pain, but Zack figured she wouldn't have told him about it anyway. She had a bad habit of erasing herself, making her existence small, and he knew he had to keep a watchful eye on her in case she vanished into her own reticence. As void as he is of book smarts, he can read her quite well.

It was the sound of Zack un-buckling his seatbelt rather than the gas station's blinding overhead lights that roused her awake. She sat up, bewildered and lost like a frightened deer, and, upon noticing his movement, her hand darted out to catch his sleeve.

"Zack, where are you going?"

"I'll be back in a second."

"Where are we?"

He paused to mentally outline the cracks in her voice. "A gas station on some road. Don't know the name." He narrowed his eyes at the hand clasping his sleeve and gave a tug of resistance. "Go back to sleep."

"But..." Her voice got lost somewhere, gaze dropping down to her lap.

Zack had only seen her frightened twice before: the first time when they met on B6 and the second when she hallucinated a giant snake on B2. Her fever must've been the reason for the third.

Although he normally enjoyed the terrified faces of past victims, Rachel wore fear strangely. Her voice grew edges like broken glass and those soft, silk-like eyes felt more like sandpaper when she looked at him.

Zack always considered himself to be consistent, steady, readable. But Rachel had layers, different versions of herself tucked beneath the surface. When she was afraid, he caught a glimpse of who she used to be. The version of her that existed before her emotions were stolen.

Her eyes were everywhere at once as she gripped his sleeve. "Don't go." Her own words seemed to surprise her because she reigned them back in only moments later. "Please?"

"Why?"

"The rehabilitation center. They're going to take me back."

"Your fever's making you crazy."

Her eyes dilated, blue and blurry, lips unsure of what to say. "My… fever?"

"Yeah."

He reached over with his free hand and held up the pink and white box of medicine he had purchased earlier. Her eyes roved over it, and he wasn't sure if that jogged her memory or not because her face became soft but her thoughts were not. She redirected her attention from the box up to him again, her eyes widening in the sepia headlights of some oversized truck as it passed. "You'll be back soon?"

"I said I would be."

He removed her hand from his sleeve, slid out from the front seat, and shuffled into the convenience store. His absence must've given her time to calm down. When he returned six minute later, she was herself again, an ocean without a current.

Dim-eyed and dreamless, she sipped her drink.

* * *

Zack looks like he's wilting, but even when he's weak, he's strong.

"We're almost there. I'm fine," he says, and Rachel notices his voice doesn't tremble at all when he says it. It's not a lie since he doesn't intend for it to be. In that stubborn brain of his, he really does think he's doing just fine. He's beaten the odds before and has learned to rely on his own luck, though that's probably not the word he would use to describe it.

She glances towards the bottle of ginger ale he bought for her last night. Those midnight hours are a blur, fragile in her hands and foggy in her memory. The only memory she can grip with certainty is Zack returning from the convenience store, snapping open the bottle, and offering it to her, saying something along the lines of, "Drink half. And don't puke."

Before that, she remembers swinging in and out of sleep, awakening once to the sound of his door swinging open and again to the sound of it slamming shut. She remembers, in pieces, a dream about the rehabilitation center. Being stuck inside a room so wide that it teased her with how trapped she felt within it. She had tried to escape with Zack through the window, just like before, but her barricade was toppled, her wrists were grabbed, and Zack was shot on sight. She still remembers his blood splattering warmly against her cheeks.

Now that she's awake, she keeps close eyes on him and says his name to prove that it was all just a dream and that he's beside her right now.

"Zack, you're swerving."

He jerks the steering wheel a bit, correcting the alignment.

She brings the bottle of ginger ale into her lap, roves her fingers along the emerald green plastic. "Should I drive?"

He shoots her a brief look. Rachel notices he does that when he can't tell if she's joking or not. She is, but her steady voice doesn't make it any less indiscernible.

"Bet you can't even see above the steering wheel." He makes a noise that sounds like a smug laugh mixed with a bitter scoff. "We'd get pulled over for sure."

He's right about that. The odds are already stacked against them with all the parking tickets Zack's ignored. In addition, the police have probably found the body of the car's previous owner by now. A search has probably already started for the car itself. They'll have to switch vehicles soon...

Rachel unscrews the cap on the drink and offers it to Zack who misses the first few times in trying to grab it.

"If you don't want to stop, we can just pull over for a little while and get some coffee," Rachel offers, watching as he quaffs the rest of the bottle. When it's empty, she takes it from him and he wipes his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve.

"I hate coffee."

"A shot of espresso, then?"

"The hell is that?"

She recalls her parents in the early mornings as they started their day to the soundtrack of a burbling coffeemaker. Her mother took hers with cream, her father took his black. She'd sipped from her father's cup a few times, but her tongue was too sensitive for bitter things. She tasted her mother's, too, and while it was sweet, it was never sweet enough. Still, she had seen the power of coffee, and how her parents arose from their sleepiness with the vigor to argue with one another before parting ways for a few safe hours. Espresso had the same affect. She's seen it in action when her father didn't have the time to make coffee and simply swung into some café's drive-thru while taking her to school.

"Espresso has a lot of caffeine," Rachel says, already taking up the phone to find the GPS app. "The caffeine acts as a stimulant for your brain."

"I don't get it, but it'll keep me awake, right?"

She nods and sets a course for the closest café.

They arrive to a crowded parking lot in a bustling residential area not even twenty minutes later. Rachel peers around the building for a drive-thru, but there isn't one. She asks if she should plot a new course, but Zack waves it off. "We're already here. Let's just get in and get out."

He waits for her as she steps carefully out of the passenger's seat, zipping his hoodie a few inches below her chin and draping the blanket around her shoulders for extra warmth. Even under the glare of the sun, she still hasn't been able to get rid of the lingering chill that her fever left behind.

The interior of the café is just as crowded as the parking lot. Rather than a café, it looks more like a fast-casual restaurant with booth-tables and titled floors. At the front of the building is a barista bar and register where a throng of people —businessmen, mothers, teenagers— are standing in line to order.

The man behind the register looks maybe five years older than Rachel herself. His gingery hair makes him seem younger, but his chipper voice adds a few years to him. When he sees her, she notices the slightest change in his expression, something that looks like confusion, although it quickly changes into a smile.

"What can I get for you guys?"

"A shot of espresso," Rachel murmurs, already used to being the one to do all the talking in situations like this.

The cashier nods and reaches over to grab a small paper cup, no taller than his own thumb. Before he can ask what else they'd like, Zack makes a noise of dissatisfaction and steps towards the counter, in front of Rachel. "That's it? That cup is tiny."

"It's just one shot," Rachel starts, but Zack turns his eyes on the cashier intimidatingly and nods towards the cup with his chin.

"Give me five."

"Five shots? But Zack, that's—"

"I've been awake for thirty hours. One ain't enough."

Rachel exchanges a glance with the cashier, but neither of them offer any further objections. The man presses a few buttons on his register screen before glancing back up. "Okay… five shots of espresso."

"You want anything?" Zack asks, glancing over his shoulder. She hadn't planned on getting anything, but she figures she might as well. The only thing she's had in the last twenty-nine hours is half a bottle of ginger ale, a pack of trail mix, and two doses of disgusting cherry medicine.

She peers over the menu briefly before ordering a creamy drink made with peach yogurt and sliced strawberries. After a few more seconds she decides to add an order of macaroni and cheese.

"You sure your stomach can handle that?" Zack asks and she nods earnestly before adding, "I'll be okay."

The employee taps it all into his register, repeating the order slowly as he does it. When he adds the mac and cheese, Rachel's mind flashes back to the map on the GPS.

"Zack, you should eat something, too. We still have a few hours before we arrive."

She watches as he considers her suggestion, sighs because he knows she's right, and then adds another mac and cheese to the order. Rachel ties it all together by asking for it to be packaged to-go.

"I'll put your order under the name 'Zack,'" the cashier says, glancing between the two of them for confirmation. "Is that 'Zack' with an 'h' or a 'k'?"

"Doesn't matter," Zack grumbles. "I know my name when it's called."

The man laughs awkwardly, nervously, and scribbles _Zack_ on the side of the cups with a black marker. He tells them the price and Rachel runs the credit card, silently deciding that, as a precaution, this will be their last time using it. After being handed the receipt, he tells them their order will be ready in a few moments.

In the far corner of the café, far from the cluster of booths and chattering people, is a long sofa with plump red cushions. They both take a seat, and Rachel allows her memories to come alive. Visiting public places —restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations— was a common occurrence when she was nine, ten, even eleven-years-old. But when Floor B1 became her dollhouse and she became its doll, time became only a trick of the mind. Those years when she lived outside of the death building seem numbingly far away. Like she was an entirely different person between then and now.

In some ways she is.

Thanks to the circulating news, she's no longer a nameless orphan. Now she's 'Rachel Gardner,' and that name carries the label of 'victim' along with it because the world thinks she's been kidnapped.

Rachel doesn't really feel like she's a different person, not really. But sometimes when they're on the road, Zack says she's looking more and more human each day. She smiled at him once, asked how it was, and he simply peered at her closer and shrugged before saying, "It's getting there."

She wonders, if things were different, if _she_ were different, would she be like one of the people bustling through the café? Laughing, talking, connecting on only a surface level simply because that's what's normal?

She was already living in a cycle of loose ends until she met Zack.

He's different from when she first met him, but not really. He's always been steady, knowing what he wants and how to get it, but he's not as guarded as he once was. He's made a place for her somewhere (maybe in his heart, maybe in his soul), and no matter how big or small that place is, Rachel will gratefully take up residency.

Perhaps she really has changed a lot ever since she met him. Perhaps the Rachel Gardner that she is today isn't the only Rachel Gardner who has ever lived.

She's roused from her thoughts when she feels Zack's body shift ever-so-slightly beside her.

"Zack," she waits, listens. "Are you sleeping?"

His breath hitches up like a spike before smoothing out again. His eyes flutter open to register her question before it leaks out of his brain and he loses it.

"No."

A pause.

"I'm just…"

And then he fades out.

Fatigue massages his shoulders into a slump and unravels his voice like yarn, allowing it to trail off into something frayed and friable. His body leans against her, requesting support that he would never ask for had he been awake. She straightens herself to bear his weight and removes the blanket from her shoulders to drape it over him instead. He exhales in a perfectly-timed response.

She watches his dreams move across his face, sometimes causing him to stir, other times causing him to murmur something small and incomprehensible. Despite being a light sleeper, he doesn't awaken even when Rachel unclenches his fist to take the car keys from him so she can place them into her own pocket for safekeeping.

Several minutes pass, and Rachel people-watches until a voice crackles over the intercom calling for Zack. She glances towards him to see if he'll awaken, but he doesn't. His eyes tense, and a small groan ekes out, but he stays with his dreams.

Rachel smiles a bit because it's all quite funny, really. He was like a child, adamantly refusing to go to sleep on Christmas Eve only to fall sleep so deeply not even the voices of strangers could rouse him.

"I'll be right back," she says and shuffles him into a position where he can support his own weight.

Within the last twenty minutes, the café has cleared out a little, but not much. The cashier area isn't as populated, as most customers have withdrawn to the center of the restaurant to meld into their electronics.

When she reaches the register, the same cashier from earlier hands over a paper bag stamped with the café's logo.

Rachel offers a cordial nod and turns to leave, but the man holds up a hand to keep her there. He leans in, his voice lowering as he says, "Actually, miss, before you go, can I ask you a question?"

She turns to him, mutely, the café bag faintly swinging on her forearm. Her eyes meet his, and she wonders if his stare would feel less intense if she had tucked her face beneath Zack's hoodie in the same way he sometimes does to keep people from looking too closely at him.

The cashier loses some of his fire as he swallows nervously. "Are you… Rachel Gardner?"

The world blurs, loses color and sound for a split second. A chill stretches across her blood, and behind her eyelids, she can see the rehabilitation center. She can always picture it so perfectly, no matter how far away she runs. White walls, manicured lawns, wood-framed windows. A dollhouse to replace B1.

There's a subtle trembling in the man's shoulders, and although Rachel feels like she should be the one trembling instead, she does not.

Nothing daunted, she meets the cashier's eyes, and her voice eases out, soft and clear: "No. I'm not."

A flicker of pink comes upon the cashier's cheeks and his seriousness crumbles instantly. "I-I'm sorry! I just, I feel like I've seen you before. On the news. I'm sorry." He grabs a stray cloth and furiously wipes the countertop, giving something besides his mouth an occupation. "H-Have a good day, Miss. Sorry, again."

Rachel returns to the couch. She sits and waits until the sun gives birth to rainbows and they dribble across her skin through the nearby window. It's almost 3 o'clock when she presses her hand into Zack's shoulder and gives it a gentle shake. He mumbles first, sighs, groans, then glances over at her. His brain picks up from where it left off.

"Did they call?"

She nods.

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"You looked…" she pauses to think of the word, "… peaceful. I didn't want to wake you since you needed the sleep."

He mumbles something she doesn't catch, though it doesn't sound offensive. He rises from the couch and adjusts the cuffs of his jacket before holding out his hand for the keys. They exit the café, and to Rachel's relief, no one stops them.

Once both car doors are shut behind them, Rachel removes a tiny paper cup with an equally tiny lid. It's a bit bigger than the espresso cup the cashier had showed them earlier, but not by much. She offers it to Zack who pinches it between two fingers and looks it over scowlingly.

"It still came in such a tiny-ass cup…"

"It doesn't really need a big one," she says, shuffling to make room for her own drink in her lap. Unlike the espresso, hers comes in a tall, transparent cup with a long purple straw. The beverage itself looks like sunset.

Zack pops the lid, tosses it, and blows on his drink. Then he recklessly tips the cup back in an attempt to gulp it all at once.

He chokes, sputters, throws open the front door and spits it out onto the asphalt.

"It's so damn _bitter_!"

Rachel peers around to make sure he's okay before settling back against her seat. "Five shots is too much."

"You didn't tell me how bitter it was! _Damn_. I didn't even swallow it, but the aftertaste is still there."

He runs his hand over his mouth, sticks out his tongue, shakes his head to try and get rid of the taste. When it doesn't go away, he glares down at the tiny cup resentfully.

Rachel sets her own drink down in the cupholder and peers over at him. "Can you finish it? I'll help."

Without waiting for him to answer, she takes the cup and ignores the bewildered look that covers his face as he watches her. She can tell from the smell alone that the drink is incredibly potent, but if she can finish at least half, maybe that will encourage Zack to do the same.

She takes a sip.

And regrets it.

The taste hits her instantly, like a punch to the gut, and she can feel her eyebrows scrunching and her lips tightening into a knot. She isn't sure if she'll be able to coax her throat into swallowing even the tiniest mouthful, when suddenly she hears Zack burst into laughter.

"That's a new face, Ray! I guess even you can't handle it!"

She swallows slowly, shudders at the taste, and shakes her own head. "It tastes…"

"Like death?"

"…Yes."

He takes the cup back from her, but Rachel eyes it wearily. "You're going to finish it?"

"Might as well, since you finished half."

With that, he swallows the rest in a single mouthful, gags, and tosses the cup into the backseat. Rather than linger on the taste any longer, he digs the key back into the ignition and one-hands the steering wheel to pull out of the lot.

"You don't want to rest for a little longer?" Rachel asks, but Zack shakes his head.

"I got a little sleep back there; I feel a lot better." He flashes her a sidelong smile, turns the wheel, and eases onto the road. "Besides, I'm in a good mood, thanks to you."

The sunlight finds him through the glass, outlining his sharp features until they become soft. Rachel thinks that maybe his face has always been like silk and she's just never noticed it before. Or maybe it really is just a trick of the light.

She takes a sip of her own drink, but hears him cringe from the espresso still blooming against his tongue. She turns to face him.

"Zack."

He glances over and she offers her cup to him. "We'll share."

His eyes alternate between the drink and her expression, almost surprised, before he leans over and gulps down more than just a sip. He licks his lips when he's done, and she can tell he's satisfied, though she's left staring at the cup pensively.

"You drank… more than half."

"I'll buy you another when we get to the next state."

Because he's smiling, Rachel can't stay upset for long. She's in a good mood, too, after all.


	6. peace in small doses

This chapter centers around how their road trip adventure began...

* * *

「 **peace in small doses.** 」

「 **— _saturday_** **: 11 a.m.** 」

* * *

For a brief moment, the light at the end of the alleyway is extinguished by his silhouette, and Rachel feels danger sink into her blood. She reaches back to grab the knife she'd been gifted for protection, but once the figure is close enough for her to recognize, her fingers relax.

"Zack." She breathes his name softly, the sound of each letter warming her.

"Hold onto this," he says, tossing her something rectangular and bound in leather. "We're heading out."

There's a splatter of fresh blood at the curve of his neck; across the knuckles of his right hand, too. Rachel can't help but wonder who his prey was this time. She identifies the leather-bound item as a wallet, and sees the inner bills and a corner of the leather are also spotted with blood. She pulls out a credit card and identifies the name 'Jonathan Swift' in tiny silver print. His driver's license makes him out to be a remarkably plain-looking man— his only notable qualities being two timid brown eyes and a wobble of a smile. He looked to have been fairly young, most likely Zack's senior, but not yet thirty. Behind the card is a picture of a little girl, maybe no older than four, with wild blond curls and a pearl-strand of teeth. She's in the lap of a brown-haired woman who's too pretty to be average but too average to be beautiful.

The only other items in the wallet are a crumple of grocery store receipts, auto insurance identification, and a membership card for a pet store.

Rachel rises from the cold asphalt, brushing crumbs of gravel from her white rehabilitation dress. "Where are we going?"

"Anywhere," Zack says with palpable flippancy.

They had escaped the rehabilitation center only two days ago, running as far and as fast as they could before they wound up in a meadow. It wasn't long before they were too hungry to stay there, so they crept back into a dirty city where Zack swiped an abandoned knife from a dumpster and gave her the gift of protection for a second time.

From there he slipped off to find food, leaving her in the alleyway with a dented can of root beer and a promise that he would return before nightfall. She waited for him for two hours. Even in the sheer fabric of her hospital gown, she wasn't particularly cold, though she was growing uncomfortable from the rocks that cut red streaks into her bare feet.

Now that he's returned, she follows him out of the alley like a phantom to its host. Her eyes catch sight of something glittery and silver that he twirls along his finger. They appear to be a set of car keys.

"Were those his?" She bobs her head down towards the wallet, even though Zack isn't facing her.

"Yeah. His car's this way."

He leads her to a car lot behind a department store. Parked in front of an 'Employee Parking' sign is an incredibly old vehicle with a dented left headlight and a dusty silver complexion. Zack presses one of the buttons on the keys and the vehicle chirps in response. Rachel glances around, perhaps for a body, perhaps for a sleuth, but the lot is empty.

While she's distracted, Zack slips something into her hand, which she recognizes as a cellphone. It's an old model, a flip phone, with a cracked and bloodied screen.

"He was chatting excitedly about something," Zack smiles at the memory. "Didn't even notice when I came up behind him. Good thing his call ended before I cut him— he started screaming as soon as he saw me."

Rachel tests the front door and it opens, unleashing the smell of peppermint and copper money. There's a red, tree-shaped air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror that Zack immediately rips off and tosses onto the street, annoyed by its tackiness. Rachel moves around him, crawling on hands and knees into the driver's seat and then to the passenger side. She searches the glove compartment, pulling out three unopened packs of trail mix and a small jar of spare change that has a crinkled Post-It label that reads 'Dream Fund.' There are only about three dimes inside.

The compartment also holds a small velvet box that Rachel is surprised to see holds a diamond ring. There's a receipt neatly folded beside it with a price (which has several zeros attached) and a date that reveals that the purchase was made this morning at some jewelry store with a flouncy name. Rachel suspects the shimmery ring is the reason for the empty Dream Fund jar as well as the excited chatter that caught Zack's attention. She thinks back to the brown-haired woman in the wallet-picture, and something within her chest sizzles and stings like a sparkler slurping up a flare. She puts the velvet box back and closes the compartment.

"Zack, is there anything in the backseat?"

"It's all useless." He grunts beneath his breath and throws a mass of white, flowery fabric to the floor of the car. Rachel, not one to dismiss things as easily, picks up the item and finds it to be a sundress. It looks new, spaghetti-strapped with a brimming, lace front. It might be able to fit her, so she tucks it under her arm.

"You're keeping it?" Zack asks, tweaking his brow. She nods.

The backseat contains a child's seat (which Zack also disposes of onto the blacktop) and a scatter of papers containing data about clothing sales. There's a six-pack (now only containing three bottles) of an energy drink and a spare dress shirt still folded and packaged in plastic. In spite of its age, Rachel notes that the car seems fairly clean. There are items inside, but only a few, and there's a sense of structure and orderliness to their occupation. Only the necessities have made their way onto the seats and into the compartments.

Jonathan Swift seemed as neat and orderly as his license made him out to be, but none of that matters anymore. All he is now is a stepping stone to freedom. An old car, an old cellphone, and a name on a credit card that has maybe ten uses left in it before it must be tossed away.

The car suddenly jolts, and Rachel realizes that Zack's sliding into the front seat. He digs the key into the ignition and the car yawns to life. Intrigued, Rachel crawls out of the backseat and turns to him.

"You're going to drive it?"

"No, I'm gonna eat it. Get in."

She staggers around to the passenger seat, now acutely aware of a cut on her left foot, and climbs in gingerly. "Do you know how to drive?"

"Can't be too hard."

"But… you don't have a license…"

"Don't need one to push a pedal and move a wheel." He fumbles with a latch beneath the seat that allows him to push his chair back and stretch out his legs. With a mild curse he also adjusts the rearview mirror, grumbling something about how short the previous owner was.

Rachel straightens herself in her chair and notices a compartment between the two seats that holds a fistful of ready money, almond-scented hand lotion, and a rolled map. She unfurls the map onto her lap, but doesn't give it much of a look. There's no destination, so, by default, no directions for her to give. She traces her index finger along the veiny red path that runs through one of the nearest states. It's probably best to create some distance.

"There are road signs," she says, her gaze lingering on a stop sign that sits at the parking lot's exit. "And rules to follow."

Zack slides the seatbelt across his front, into the buckle, and turns his eyes to her for the first time. "Then guide me."

She holds his gaze, sees the trust he has for her reflected back. She can't say no to those eyes that give her purpose. The eyes that don't acknowledge her as a little sister or a friend or a lover, but as something nameless and intimate and warmly unfamiliar. As someone who has seen the colors of his soul and still allows himself to be bound to her. He's given his life for her to hold before, and those eyes tell her he'll do it a million more times if he has to.

Rachel feels alive under his gaze— alive in a way that feels like a tender, whispering ache. So instead of offering any more objections, instead of listening to reason and law and good sense, she buckles her own seatbelt and nods.

"I'll do my best to be useful to you."

He smiles at her, and for no other reason than that, she feels like she's made the right choice.

* * *

"Where do you wanna go?"

Zack's voice is a welcome interruption to the rippling silence. For the past thirty minutes, as he familiarized himself with the structure of the car and how it moved and how to move with it, the only noise was the dull drone of the engine, the whistle of the wind from a slightly cracked window, and the occasional curse when the car didn't move the way he thought it should.

Before traveling far, Rachel had suggested they briefly stop into a convenience store for a few items like a new sewing kit and a change of clothes (for Zack) that weren't fresh with the stench of blood. She hadn't gotten to grab much more than that before she began to sense long-lingering stares aimed her way, most likely due to her own strange attire.

Once she had returned to the car, she donned the white sundress. At first it was a bit long and hung loosely at the chest due to her lack of breasts to fill it, but she found a way to fasten it closer to her with a hair ribbon that was left behind from the child's carseat. She makes plans to permanently mend it later.

Her gaze lingers down at the map as if the answers to Zack's questions lie there, and, in fact, they do. A familiar name jumps out at her and an odd sense of nostalgia grips her.

"There is one place, though it's a bit selfish of me to ask."

"Huh? Why?"

"If possible, I'd like to spend the rest of the day there."

He gives her a sideways look, narrowing his eyes the way he always does when she says things spun too heavily in mystery. She isn't sure how to untangle the knots for him, so she simply says, "I went there with my family when I was little. I'd like to go back one more time before we leave this state."

Her finger glides across the crinkled map as if simply touching the route is enough to take her there. "There's a resort located there, so we'll be able to stay the night," she adds, though it isn't as if Zack needs convincing. He relents without protest, maneuvering the jerky car onto a new road at her instruction.

Rachel leads the way down several stretches of road and past overarching street signs, interspersing as much driving knowledge as she's gained from reading books and watching others.

They arrive an hour before noon at a stupidly enormous stretch of land that boasts more sounds and colors and people than two fugitives should feel comfortable around. Zack, of course, is not, and glares at the woman who ushers their car—and many others—into the tightly-structured parking lot until she finally walks away.

"Ray, what the hell is this place?"

"It's an amusement park."

"What the hell—"

"We should hurry and catch the trolley. It'll be another five minutes before the next one comes."

He makes an attempt to protest this time, but the air swallows it because Rachel isn't listening. She steps out of the car and follows the flock of other people who buzz eagerly towards the edge of the parking lot. There are poles and safety cones set up to block impatient people and overexcited children from death by trolley, but in case physical deterrents aren't good enough, a staff member commands all visitors to stay behind a white line that's etched perfectly straight in the asphalt.

The trolley (which is actually a parking lot tram) comes, bright-red and loud, with the hum of a healthy engine. Zack catches up to her just as it rumbles to a halt, and although Rachel knows he has questions to ask, she also knows that all of them just meld together into a single: 'what the hell are you thinking?' The only explanation she has for him is the nostalgic spurring from her childhood, though she isn't sure even _that_ is a good enough reason to be here.

They board the trolley alongside several families, and they all remind Rachel of Jonathan Swift with his pretty-ish girlfriend and their daughter who hasn't yet bloomed. Seated around them are little girls who wear their innocence like a smile, nuzzling into their mothers' laps and threading their fingers between their fathers' hands. There are little boys who have amusement park memorabilia in their hands as they whisper jokes to one another behind mischievous smiles. There are even older people— girls maybe five years older than Rachel herself, who sit in groups of twos, threes, and fours, giggling into cellphones with their long, winged eyelashes and rose-gold jewelry.

Rachel takes them in slowly, as one would observe a foreign species. She's become so accustomed to humans who wear uniforms—police badges and nurse scrubs—that it's almost strange to see miniskirts and overalls and other stylish attire. Zack ignores all of them and retreats into his new hoodie like a turtle in its shell. Rachel prefers to picture him as a turtle rather than the black sheep she knows he is among these people who look normal and harmless and human. She knows he's particularly upset at having to leave his scythe in the backseat, flat on the floor, practically hidden beneath the seats to avoid the eyes of anyone who may peek inside.

It's a three minute ride as the trolley takes them from a blacktop of white safety lines into a world of rainbow-colored music and sugar-smiled children. As they step off from the vehicle, Rachel expects Zack to make a snide remark or a grumbled retort. Instead he looks towards the ground in her direction.

"You need shoes."

She glances down at her feet which, just yesterday, were pale-white and small but are now swollen red with cuts. She had ignored the pain so well that her body instinctively began carrying her on the heels of her feet to prevent the cuts from getting more agitated. However, now that he mentions it, the discomfort comes back to her in tiny waves.

"There are shops beyond the entrance gate," she says, though the pain doesn't reach her face. "I'll buy some there." She wobbles to the ticket counter and purchases two tickets into the park as well as a room in the connecting resort.

Once they enter, the sky looks bluer, less cloudy, and the air smells sweeter like cotton candy and popsicles. Childish voices beckon their parents to match their frenzied strides and pre-teen boys rush by as if they have wings attached to their backs.

Rachel chooses one store among many and Zack follows her inside. The air smells like buttery popcorn due to an old-fashioned popcorn stand pressed into the corner, surrounded by a throng of eager-eyed visitors all waiting their turn. Beyond the stand are rows of clothing: graphic tees, onesies, and pajama pants all slapped with prints of cartoon mascots that belong to the park's franchise. Beside them are plush toys, some so enormous that they have to be carried in both arms, and flurries of colorful pillow and blanket sets. Across the store are shelves with mugs printed with more mascot characters and gooey puns. They sit beside bulky silverware sets that seem more for childish fun rather than actual use, and plastic dolls that wear sparkly gowns rather than plain dresses and come with fantasy castles rather than dollhouses.

Rachel wanders towards one section, as if the whispering of something internal leads the way. And, just as she anticipates, the shelves hold wide, brown boxes. The same brown boxes she had seen as a child. Every box is identical, formed with reddish-brown chestnut and decorated with gold trimming. There are knobs on the bottom, and empty, hollow interiors. Music boxes. Her music box.

A memory bubbles up to the surface: an image of her wearing a pastel lavender dress that her mother had bought and mended many times until it was too loved to be mended anymore. Rachel wore that dress while seated in between her parents. There was a genuine smile on her face as she clutched the music box in her tiny hands. A beautiful picture of a beautiful family. She couldn't have perfected it even if she tried.

She doesn't wind one of the boxes because she's memorized its melody by heart. A melody so soft that it's almost cruel. It spills out across her memory, softening every ache until new ones appear. When she leaves the display, she doesn't feel compelled to look back.

She walks over to the shelves of clothing and chooses a pair of sandals that will hug her feet with just the right amount of comfort. As she walks toward the register to purchase them, a display that takes up an entire wall suddenly catches her eye. It contains dozens of trinkets hanging on tiny silver pegs. The trinkets are designed to look like a single angel wing, lined in either silver or gold. In the middle of the wing is a name written in delicate cursive.

Rachel stares at them, mesmerized, until Zack draws up beside her.

"What're those?"

"Souvenirs." She pauses, thoughtful. "A memory in physical form."

"Isn't that what pictures are for?"

"I suppose," she says. "But these are customized. They have names printed on them." She reaches over and takes up one of the angel wings, gliding her finger over the name inscribed therein. "People who buy them… it's as if they're saying 'I was here' and these souvenirs acknowledge that." She begins replacing the trinket on the peg, but Zack reaches around her and snatches one up.

She looks over at him questioningly and he shows it to her.

"This one has your name on it. The letters are the same as the plate in your room." There's a hint of pride in his voice, just the smallest inkling of self-satisfaction that Rachel can't help but nod her head as if to congratulate him. It's almost strange seeing her name written in such loving handwriting after seeing the sober black type of hospital documents and medical charts.

She turns back to the display, eyes searching quickly over the rows before she selects two and shows them to him.

"What do those say?"

"Zack is a popular name; they don't have anymore. But these are close. This one," she pauses to hold up the one in her left hand, "says Zachary. And this one," she holds up the other hand, "says Isaac."

Zack makes a face, rejecting both names. He places the Rachel souvenir back on its peg before thrusting his hands into his pockets. "If you're gonna buy something, then buy something useful like food."

"You don't want one?" she asks, though she already knows the answer. She knows the answer but asks anyway because today she can't help feeling a little selfish. She doesn't need a souvenir, doesn't need anything to testify of the memories she has of this place. But she wants something. Two angel wings to form a promise. To acknowledge that she didn't come here alone. No, Zack is here, too.

"What for?" Zack shrugs, though it doesn't sound like he expects an answer. He slides a few random shirts across the silvery clothing racks before giving her a once-over. "You're not gonna sleep in that, are you?"

She glances down at the sundress that's been fashioned to accept her petiteness. "What's wrong with it?"

"Too many damn frills."

She considers this, internalizes it, and decides that he's right. She walks up beside him and looks over the racks. Most of them are T-shirts, about her size, though maybe a tad on the large side. There are tracksuit jackets and baseball caps among them, each printed with either the amusement park logo or some kind of chummy phrase.

She glances over them curtly. "What should I get?"

"You're asking _me_?"

She utters a small, affirmative hum and nods her head. Zack brings a hand to the side of his head and rubs it irritatedly. "I don't know, just pick something. Doesn't matter as long as it fits." Although he says this, he continues hastily sliding the shirts across the rack until Rachel makes a small noise and reaches out her hand to stop him.

"This one."

She selects an oversized, off-white T-shirt with a pale blue stripe that runs horizontally across the center. After coordinating it with a pair of shorts, she locates a register while Zack waits for her outside.

* * *

When she exits the store, bag in hand and sandals on feet, the music of the park has changed. It's closer, somehow, not blaring from a hidden intercom or stereo system situated above the crowds, but within her reach as if she could touch it. Zack stands at the exit, but he doesn't look up even when she arrives at his side. He's staring at something in the distance, face furrowed as he tries to make sense of it.

"What's going on?"

Rachel follows the line of his gaze to verdant green floats and costumed people capering in circles. She faintly remembers a similar occurrence from her childhood.

"It's the elf parade."

"The wha—?"

A spray of children rush by just then, hands clapping, smiles blooming, voices booming, as they approach the buzz of life that marches on up ahead. Rachel watches them and imagines Jonathan Swift's daughter among them.

"The mascots of this park are elves. Staff members dress up in costumes and have a parade twice a day, once around lunchtime and another in the afternoon." She regards the confetti trail that each float leaves behind as it churns down the crowded streets. There are people seated upon the decorative floats, each dressed in vibrance and light makeup and pointed ears while others skip alongside to throw confetti and candies by the handfuls.

It takes Rachel a few additional moments before she realizes something quite crucial. Something she should've known before even entering the park.

There are far too many smiles in this area for Zack not to be tempted. Even without his scythe, she doesn't doubt the strength of his bare hands if the impulse gets too strong.

Thinking fast, she peels open a guide map that was given to her upon admission and places it between her and Zack. Her sudden movements drag his attention from the crowds down to the colorful paper she holds between them. She considers this a good sign.

"There's something I wanted to ride when I was little," she says, pointing down at an illustration of something that bends and twists like a snake, "but I was too short."

"What's that?"

"It's a roller coaster. Have you ever been on one?"

"No."

She briefly considers how she'll sell him on it. The attraction is a 310-foot-tall catastrophe, fashioned to look like the twisting body of a steel green sea monster. The brochure boasts a 300-foot drop, four overbanked turns, and a speed of 120 miles per hour, but she has a feeling none of that information will make any sense to him. Instead, she'll go for something that even he can grasp.

"It goes upside-down," she says simply, "and backwards. And there's a big drop, too."

"Oh yeah?" his eyes seem to flicker just a bit. "How big?"

"Three-hundred feet," she pauses to put it into perspective. "Fifty times your height."

"Fifty times?"

"If fifty versions of you were stacked on top of each other."

That's when she sees it, a smile on his face that peels back far enough to show the sharpness of his teeth. "You sure you're tall enough for it, though?"

"It says the height limit is 4'6." I'm okay."

"Then let's go."

She guides him through the clogged streets, narrowly avoiding the throngs of people as they cluster near the paths of the floats. The roller coaster is located on the other end of the park, away from the noise, moderately populated, and Rachel leads him into a queue that's flanked by braided turquoise ropes. The wait time is long, at least thirty minutes, and Rachel has to break off to buy a bucket of popcorn to placate Zack somewhere in the middle of it. At another point she has to draw her hair up into a ponytail because the heat makes it heavy and sticky.

When it's finally their turn, they're directed by some stultified teen to the front row of the green coaster train. He tells them to lower the lap bars, pushes up on them to make sure they're secure, and then leaves them to direct another few pairs into the seats behind them.

Rachel thinks that, perhaps, a roller coaster is a better distraction. Even as the people behind them are screaming in terror, there's now a physical restraint that keeps Zack from getting to them. But she can see him through her peripheral vision, his face smoothed like a child, constellations sewn into his eyes, head swiveling as he's captivated by the track and the railings and the upcoming turn.

After a few moments of waiting, the ride peels away from the gate, slowly at first, and one glance at what lies ahead makes Rachel grateful that she's tied her hair back. The voice of steel moans beneath them, and with a pitch and roll they begin to gain speed. She counts the seconds, but her concentration is dashed when their car dips. They roll over a series of small hills that jolt down suddenly before bobbing back above the surface, finally relinquishing them to a rush of speed and the wind that comes with it. There's a rumbling like thunder as the sky begins to blur and the wind fills Rachel's lungs so speedily that it blows away whatever breath resides there.

They tear down the track and the sky and the ground change places for one terrifyingly exhilarating moment before they're jerked to the side, back and forth. She can hear the howl of the people and the screams of the wind and her heartbeat begins to soar about as high as the coaster itself as it makes its ascent. It climbs, higher and higher, until it reaches its peak, giving its passengers a glimpse into the depths of the park below. She can make out the greens of trees and the dots of people, but they're all meaningless spots of moving color.

Then the universe moves in slow motion, and she can pick through the strands of every color, every vibration, every pulse of life. The wind appears all around her, combing its fingers through her hair and expelling shivers along her arms.

At the peak of the 310-foot-drop, Rachel stares straight down into the whole wide world below her, and then, with only a whistle of wind as a warning, they plummet down to meet it. All at once, she feels the embrace of Zack's laughter. It sounds so exuberant and free and carelessly raucous that she shivers against its warmth before allowing it to submerge her. With wide eyes she peeks over to catch a glimpse, and it's then that she realizes with utmost certainty that she loves the way he smiles.

* * *

Zack's laughter remains in Rachel's bones for several hours after. It stays with her as she leads the way towards other attractions, other rides, other shows, and he follows her to each one, placing his enjoyment in her hands. There are dark rides that tell stories scented with magic and wonder, circus-style shows featuring lion tamers and swanlike dancers, and more than their fair share of earth-shattering thrill rides (because Zack enjoys them the most).

Everywhere she looks she sees Jonathan Swift, his would-have-been fiancée, their tiny daughter, and those faces gradually blend into her father's, her mother's, and her own. It's a wonderful memory, so cruel in its affection that her spirit leaves her body and she forgets she's Rachel Gardner, a girl on the run, the centerpiece of the nightly news tragedy, the victim of circumstance who disappeared under the full moon. For a moment she forgets it all, and her heart floats like a balloon.

At sundown, just before the fireworks, they purchase milkshakes and take a bus to the connected resort. Rachel checks them into their room using the stolen credit card, and, fortunately, the receptionist mistakes Zack as Johnathan and hands him a card key to the room.

The room is nice, impeccably so, with bedsheets like angel feathers and chocolates left upon pillows. Rachel takes a shower first while Zack remains in the room with the television, immersed in some program that seems loud and violent enough to keep his attention. She keeps her shower brief and slips into the oversized shirt and shorts she purchased. As she exits the bathroom and enters the connecting bedroom, the first echoes of fireworks ring out into the night.

She can see their colors tint against the curtains, but she doesn't bother to see for herself. Each rumble and crash sounds familiar, like gunshots, and that realization is enough for her to bring a hand to her abdomen to feel the knotting of flesh there. Two holes, both treated, both aching vaguely when she touches them.

She remembers Danny's voice, Zack's voice, both coming to her as if she were underwater. And their faces were blurry and untouchable through the hot streaks of her tears. She wasn't afraid to die back then, but the death that awaited her was too lonely to be ideal. Its fingers were too cold, holding her hand but not quite cradling her the way she wanted it to.

Her mind returns to the hotel room when she hears the television shut off. She finds Zack standing at the entrance of the bedroom, quiet and considering for only a few moments.

"You okay?"

She draws her hand away and makes room for him on the bed. "Yes, I'm fine."

"Does it hurt?"

"Only a little."

He glances at her and something nostalgic and warm finds its way into his eyes. "I thought I was gonna lose you, you know. But you're actually pretty tough for a kid." He fillips her forehead and his laugh is broken glass, coarse and sharp and recklessly wonderful. She becomes a mirror, stares at him, basks in his warmth, and listens as he asks, "How old did you say you were?"

"Fourteen."

"Huh? For some reason that sounds different from before."

"Today's my birthday."

He's surprised as he pulls back the blankets, pausing to glance over at her. "And you didn't say anything?"

"What should I have said?"

He considers this, but Rachel watches him shrug it off because he doesn't have an answer, either. He turns to the pillow instead, noticing the wrapped truffle there for the first time. "What's this?"

"Chocolate. Some hotels leave them on the pillows for hospitality."

He plucks it up, observes it with a hum, before offering it to her. "You can have mine."

"You don't want it?"

"Nah, just take it."

Once she does, he flops down into the bed beside her, causing the blanket to rise like a cloud for a brief moment. Rachel takes that as her cue to shut off the lamp and climb in beside him.

The fireworks continue for several minutes after, painting the sky with distant explosions. Through a sliver in the curtain, a full moon screams in decibels of light.

Rachel stares up at the ceiling, chocolate tucked in her mouth, wounds humming beneath the sheets. She thinks of Jonathan Swift, and not only him but all of the families she's seen that day. It's hard to believe she was once like them.

Within five minutes Zack is fast asleep, which is strange because he never tires easily. She assumes this is the first time in a while that he's gotten to sleep in a bed, and that lulled him to sleep faster than anything.

She rolls onto her side where he faces away from her, his body a shadowy fortress that suddenly blocks out the moon from this angle. She feels compelled to reach out to him, to reach deep beneath his skin and wrap her fingers around his soul. To make him stay by her side until all goes quiet.

The fireworks continue and she decides to close the curtain as not to disturb him. On her way, she bumps against a tiny coffee table located in the center of the room, and hears a shuffle of plastic as something falls to the floor. Upon inspection, it's a bag from the park, the bag Zack brought back when they had split up earlier and she went to the bathroom while he bought snacks.

There aren't any snacks in the bag— not anymore. There aren't any wrappers or crumpled containers, either. Instead, awash in a band of moonlight, Rachel sees two angel wings.

Her name is carved lovingly into the center of one, and his name— _Isaac_ —is in the other. He went back and bought them.

On a slow, soft breath she realizes she doesn't have to ask him to stay by her side.

He never planned on leaving anyway.


End file.
